Badpuppy Gay Today

Thursday, 12 June 1997

President Clinton vowed to stop human cloners Monday, following the presentation to him of a group report he requested after the February announcement of the cloning in Scotland of a sheep, a mammal, Dolly. Three bills in Congress are presently poised to outlaw human cloning. One Congressman noted that the President's appointed cloning investigators had, shockingly, failed to call for a permanent ban on human cloning, supporting instead of a temporary one.

Randolfe Wicker, founder and public relations director for CRUF (Clone Rights United Front--see GayToday's continuing series on cloning) addressed the President's BioEthics Commission, calling for an end to all political posturing. His speech followed an earlier written submission to the group. Wicker spoke to the media and to assembled scientific experts as founder of the nation's only militant pro-cloning group. Government-appointed scientists had been called into conference three months previously, charged with a 90-day task, that of addressing the many complex issues that surround human cloning. Spokespersons made note that a long range study of cloning effects would be necessary, suggesting that cloning only up-to-the-threshold of human birthing would, presently, constitute a proper scientific experiment.

Wicker told Badpuppy's GayToday he'd traveled on the weekend from New York to the nation's capital after being allotted a place at the table in the fiercely raging battle over cloning ethics. He was taken aback, he admitted, at the general state of confusion over issues that that raged in the meeting, often, he said, intellectually out of control. A fiercely anti-cloning article from The New Republic was introduced, as was the press kit for pro-cloners' Clone Rights United Front.

"The men in suits and ties may sit around and try, by hook or crook, to stop the inevitable, but they can't stop it. Cloning's going happen soon! Dr. Ian Wilmut predicts only 2 years from now. Nobody can stop it. These kinds of banning it arguments are passé. If it doesn't happen on the mainland, it'll happen in some third-world locale somewhere," said the founder of the world's first pro-cloning activists group.

CBS, ABC, and NBC filmed CRUF's point-making orator for national news reports. He was later sighted speaking on both NBC and ABC and interviewed at length by five mass-circulation magazines and newspapers. These media episodes were preceded last May 25 by 16 small "cloned" photos of Wicker on page 18 of the New York Times Magazine.

His prediction that the birth of cloning held strange promises of the birth of a new religion came true for Wicker upon his recent receipt of a press release from just such a group, agreeing, for a fee, to personal offshore clonings. A report in GayToday about what Wicker describes as this UFO-conscious group, will be forthcoming. "They too, are pro-cloning," he explains, knowing, perhaps, that it is wise to make, for the political best interests of the cloning cause, no hasty judgments about any of CRUF's potential allies.

Boston University's law professor, George Annas, held opinions of the meetings that confirm Randolfe Wicker's perceptions of intellectual disarray. Annas said, "Their argument against cloning was that it was going to harm children, but Dolly was the only lamb to be born of this cloning effort and no evidence shows she was harmed."

Randolfe Wicker told GayToday that arguing against cloning because of possible birthing failures is unfair. "There are birthing failures the old-fashioned birthing way too," he explained.