CGS-authored
As the world waits for scientific confirmation or debunking
of claims by the Raelians that they have cloned a human being,
much attention has been paid to just how odd the group is. And
rightly so. I interviewed Rael at UFOland, his Quebec headquarters,
last summer, and it was among the strangest days of my life:
a cordial chat with a former sportswriter wearing a white jumpsuit
that looked like something from a "Star Trek" prop
closet, just down the hall from a mock-up of the spacecraft
where "the Elohim" first revealed themselves to him.
But the weirdness of the Raelians should not be allowed to obscure the wider mission they share with other self-proclaimed pioneers on the human genetic frontier -- people who, though cloaked in science instead of sectarianism, foresee remaking human beings in ways that make the genesis of baby Eve seem almost innocent.
Robert Lanza, for instance, a vice president at Advanced Cell Technology, called the Raelian announcement "appalling," "irresponsible" and "a sad day for science." Yet Lanza, two years ago, predicted that soon we would...