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The Washington, D.C., panel (video) was held in hopes of gathering information in order to aid decisions on a United States moratorium on human cloning. The U.S. House of Representatives voted last week to outlaw the experimentation.

But Italian doctor Severino Antinori and Panos Zavos, a Kentucky fertility specialist, plan to work outside U.S. jurisdiction in order to clone humans by the end of the year.

Brigitte Boisselier, a scientific director of Clonaid, joined the doctors onstage. She claims cloning is a way to find "eternal life." She also believes in the Raelian Movement, which claims extraterrestrial scientists started life on Earth. Boisselier hinted that she may already be doing human cloning experiments.

The conference heated up as outraged scientists condemned the two doctors, saying animal cloning has resulted in too many abnormalities. The consensus among attendees was that animal cloning will be perfected, but at this point it would not be responsible, ethical, or effective to try on humans.

Antinori outlined the team's cloning plan (essentially the same technique that produced Dolly the sheep), saying they would guard against abnormalities. The team will use a screening process on cloned embryo cells looking for possible problems. Only normal embryos would be implanted into a volunteer and then closely monitored. The team will select 200 women and implant 10 embryos in each—possibly by November. Panos claimed the team had privileged information on the procedure that it could not give out.

Rudolf Jaenisch, a biologist and animal cloning pioneer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Whitehead Institute, said what the team has in mind was "not good science." He said 1 to 5 percent of cloned animals make it to birth and some of those will die early on.

After his presentation, Antinori held an impromptu press conference and he called those who have attempted cloning in the past "veterinarians" who conducted "scientific manipulation." He went on to call President Bush and the Pope criminals. His justification is unclear.

The Telegraph quoted Antinori as saying, "The Pope is screaming at me. He wants to avoid the condom and IVF. Nobody announced the criminal when President Bush met in Rome the Pope. Vatican is behind the Bush, Vatican is criminal."

Diplomats rush to Afghanistan as 'evidence' mounts
Afghan Taliban leaders addressed the media on Tuesday armed with Bibles and computer disks that they say prove aid workers in Kabul were converting Muslims to Christianity.

On August 5, authorities shut down an aid agency and arrested its 24-person staff on charges of promoting Christianity. Sixteen are Afghan, four German, two Australian, and two American.

In midst of the allegations, the German-based agency, Shelter Now International (also known as Shelter Germany), has denied the staff did anything of the sort. A spokesman has said Shelter Now is only an aid program and not a Christian organization.

In addition to a Dari version of the Bible and a computerized story of Jesus, Taliban's deputy minister for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice showed reporters a handwritten "confession" from a prisoner and a book on Christianity, Reuters reported.

Today, diplomats from Australia, the United States, and Germany are hoping to travel together to Afghanistan to see the eight foreign detainees. They have not been seen since their arrest. According to Reuters, all three nations have agreed to work together for access and will try for a flight today, but visas may not be available in time. Taliban officials have not responded to notification of the visit.

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August (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45