A ban on federal funds to clone humans and a request from President Clinton to scientists to refrain from human cloning research also marked last year's reaction of government bureaucrats to a technology that futurists in 1997 gave approximately a year before getting underway.

The announcement was made first (Tuesday evening) on National Public Radio (NPR) and Richard Seed was said to have negotiated with an unnamed Chicago clinic that, he hopes, he will be able to duplicate human cloning services in U.S. cities nationwide. Seed, according to NPR, has the technical equipment that will be needed to clone humans.

Before midnight Wednesday, news of Seed's plans had been conveyed worldwide through the media. Both cloning advocates and opponents of the practise became instantly sought-after spokespersons for their views.

Randolfe Wicker, founder of the world's first militant pro-human cloning activist group, Clone Rights United Front (212-255-1439) was besieged by radio and TV invitations throughout Wednesday, including one from Paramount Pictures to be taped on or about January 15 for The LEEZA Show, a major venue for TV daytime talk.

Both California attorney Mark D. Eibert (a pro-human-cloning advocate on behalf of infertile couples) and CRUF's Wicker now fear immediate calls to outlaw human cloning nationwide, following the passage of such a law by California that became effective January 1.

"Before Congress and others states rush to emulate California," says Eibert, they should set aside the current hysteria over cloning, and rationally consider the damage being done." Eibert says, "Cloning is not about Frankenstein or herds of identical slaves, its about motherhood and reproductive freedom."

The real question, says Eibert, is "who should decide whether and how an individual can have children? The individual, or the government?"

"Actually," he explains, "it's a trick question. The Constitution permits only one answer."

Fifteen percent of Americans suffer, says Eibert, from infertility. He notes that much infertility cannot be cured by medicine. A Consumer Reports study of fertility clinics show IVF and similar technologies work for only 25% of patients.

"In a world," says Eibert, "blessed by cloning technology, however, viable eggs or sperm would not be needed to conceive children—any body cell would do. Thus, cloning offers infertile couples something everyone else takes for granted—the chance to have, raise and love their own genetic children."

Eibert, like Randolfe Wicker, argues that a cloned child would not be a "Xerox copy" of anyone. America, he says, already has 1.5 million identical twins and "they are far from identical. They have different brain structures, IQ's, fingerprints and personalities."

Randolfe Wicker noted early on that gay men and lesbians suddenly have a viable means of same-sex reproduction. "Heterosexuality's monopoly on reproduction is now historically obsolete," he told GayToday last year.