Upstate Professor quits to clone humans - News about religious cults and sects

A controversial scientist with ties to a religious cult is quitting her upstate college teaching job to concentrate on her bizarre quest to clone a human baby.

Dr. Brigitte Boisselier resigned last week as a visiting chemistry professor at Hamilton College, near Utica, "to focus full-time on her work in cloning," said school spokesman Michael Debraggio.

The mother of three is scientific director of Clonaid, a biotech firm affiliated with the Raelians, a cult that teaches that humans were cloned by extraterrestrials.

"We are committed to proceeding with the cloning and definitely think we'll have a pregnancy by the end of this year," Boisselier told The Post yesterday.

She said Clonaid will go ahead with plans to do the cloning in the United States, unless the Food and Drug Administration gets its way.

Last week Boisselier told a congressional panel that the FDA sent Clonaid a letter warning it would be violating federal regulations if it goes ahead with the controversial human-cloning experiment without the agency's approval.

And the FDA contends that, based on safety and other issues, it would not give any applications the green light at this time.

Boisselier disagrees.

"All the lawyers I have talked to say the FDA has no jurisdiction," she said.

"But whether it's here, in the U.S., or somewhere else, we will do it."
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