Like it or Not, Human Cloning Will Happen

The National Academy of Sciences building in Washington might seem to be an odd place for a fist fight. But reporters know any slugging match, anywhere, is news. Even a scuffle is guaranteed to get on the tube.

As it happened, we journalists covering last week's conference at the NAS, " Scientific and Medical Aspects of Human Cloning," had to settle for rising voices and flaring tempers. Given the intensity of interest in the topic, we couldn't fail to get some news out of the session. How much truth we got is a different story.

Built in 1924, the NAS headquarters is one of those majestic white-marble, Greek-temple-like edifices on Constitution Ave. A statue of Albert Einstein sits in a nearby park, adding to the heavyweight feel. So I, too, try to think Deep Thoughts as I walk into the NAS, especially as I enter a big rotunda inside, truly a cathedral of science.

So what's the first thing I see? A scrum of reporters, knotted around two men arguing loudly. Are they a pair of eggheads debating, perhaps, the specifics of ooplasmic somatic cell aggregate nuclear transfer? Nope. It's just two activists yelling at each other.

One disputant is Randolfe Wicker of the Clone Rights United Front. His biography makes much of the fact that he once appeared on NBC's "Leeza Show" but offers no information about his scientific credentials. The other arguer is the Rev. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition. He doesn't seem to be much of a scientist, either.

As I lurk at the outer edge of the gaggle, it's hard for me to hear, but I catch the words "Hitler" and "ignorant" enough times to know that this is not a learned discussion. Rather, it's the verbal equivalent of ultimate fighting, a ritualized battle between extremists saying the most extreme things possible.

Which, of course, explains why all the reporters, including me, have thronged around. None of us wants to miss a rumble. It certainly beats trying to understand, let alone explain, the difference between a gene and a gamete.

As I wait for some battering, or at least some assaulting, I look idly up at the ceiling of the soaring, vaulted dome that I'm standing under. Amid all the mosaics and iconography, I can see these words wreathed around the ceiling: "To science -- pilot of industry -- conqueror of disease -- multiplier of the harvest -- explorer of the universe -- revealer of nature's laws -- eternal guide to truth."

And here I stand, underneath those lofty thoughts, waiting and hoping that one of these controversialists will pop the other. I can do better than this, I tell myself.

So I go inside to the NAS auditorium, hoping for some enlightenment as the program begins. Big mistake. The star panelist is Severino Antinori, an Italian doctor who seven years ago helped a 62-year-old woman give birth to a child. He now says he wants to help 200 women give birth to cloned embryos.

His presentation is incomprehensible. Without having mastered English, Antinori speaks in the fast-flowing cadences of his native country and bits and pieces of Italian fly across the room like meatballs in a food fight. Under hostile questioning from others on stage, he gives answers that sound vague to me, and I have only a vague understanding of the topic, anyway.

Other panelists in the crossfire include Panayiotis Zavos, a Kentucky-based colleague of Antinori's who runs the Andrology Institute -- that's the science of the male reproductive system. And there's Brigitte Boisellier, the Canadian cultist who runs a group called Clonaid -- 'nuff said.

Many observers in the room, including the chairman of the conference, Irving Weissman, professor of biology at Stanford, make their skepticism about the efforts of Antinori, Zavos and Boisellier abundantly apparent.

"I don't hear much science," Weissman says in a post-panel interview. But they laughed at the Wright Brothers, too.

I'm no scientist, and I certainly didn't get much science last Tuesday. But here's what I think:

We're at the edge of a new era in which science fiction -- or science non-fiction -- will start to muscle out political science. Yes, frauds and publicity hounds will abound, but somewhere, someday soon, cloning is going to happen

And it's going to change everything, whether we understand it or not, whether we're ready or not.