Raelians: Clone artist - News about religious cults and sects

Dozens of major media outlets, from 60 Minutes to the New York Times, have reported recently that the aelians, a Quebec-based free-love cult, are about to clone a millionaire's dead baby in their secret laboratory. JAN WONG investigates the Raelians -- who also say the human race was created by super-aliens and that their leader is Christ's half-brother -- and wonders, why on Earth does anybody believe them?

Saturday, April 7, 2001
White candles flicker alongside a dish of fresh strawberries. Diane Brisebois clutches a microphone, torch-singer style. She's sexy in tight pants and red lipstick, curls cascading over her shoulders. "At 11, as we always do," she says, "we will make telepathic contact with our leaders."

Brisebois is the chief priestess in Ontario for the Raelians (rhymes with "aliens"). It's only 10:35 a.m., because, an organizer explains, it takes 25 minutes to reach the extraterrestrials called Elohim (rhymes with "annoying").

To Raelians, evolution is bunk. The Elohim cloned their own DNA to create the human race in a laboratory 25,000 years ago, according to Rael, the one-named cult leader, a transplanted Frenchman who lives half the year in Florida and the other half at UFOland, the Raelians' theme park and condo complex about an hour northeast of Montreal.

Rael founded his sect in France in 1973, but it is now based in Quebec. It claims 55,000 members in 84 countries, but the real number is probably half that. Now 54, Rael advocates sensual massage, nude meditation, free love, and eternal life through human cloning.

He'd also like you to tithe your after-tax income. And until you can clone yourself, he requests that when you die, you leave the bulk of your worldly possessions to the sect. Its plans include an embassy, complete with spaceship landing pad, for the Elohim's scheduled return in 2035. So far, it has raised about $11-million.

In the meantime, the cult hopes to reap an even bigger windfall. Targeting a growing market of bereaved parents, infertile or same-sex couples, and your average megalomaniac, the Raelians plan to clone the first human. Or so they have declared in dozens of interviews to pliant, panting media, and, last week, in testimony before the U.S. Congress.
(...)

Everyone including 60 Minutes to Good Morning America to Dan Rather has duly reported that the cult has a bereaved and very rich American couple bankrolling its effort. The unnamed couple wants to clone their 10-month-old son who died following an operation two years earlier.

News groups have also repeated the Raelians' claim to have 50 wombs at their disposal. One belongs to Brisebois. Another belongs to the eldest daughter of Brigitte Boisselier, chairman, chief executive officer and "scientific director" of Clonaid, the cult's cloning company.

Finally, the media swallow whole the Raelian story that they have a lab up and running in the United States -- even though no one has ever seen it -- and that they are cloning a human as you read this.

The Raelians have a history of stunning announcements followed by zero results. In 1997, when Dolly the sheep was cloned, the Raelians said they had more than a million customers and were building a laboratory in the Bahamas.

"It was just a P.O. box," admits Rael, formerly a wannabe race-car driver named Claude Vorilhon. "There was nothing. We wanted to see if there was interest from potential customers, potential investors, from scientists."

In their current media blitz, the Raelians have not had to buy a single ad to let potential customers know they are selling human eggs for $5,000 (U.S.), storing DNA samples for $50,000 and cloning babies for $200,000. Make that $500,000. Or $1-million. As publicity builds, the price keeps going up.
(...)

Though Boisselier is a chemist, not a geneticist, that doesn't stop Clonaid's scientific director from stating that the "success rate for cloning cattle is 15 to 30 per cent." It's actually 1 per cent. It took 277 tries before scientists succeeded in producing Dolly the sheep. And a three-year, $3.7-million effort in Texas to clone a mongrel dog named Missy for an anonymous West Coast billionaire has so far failed.

But why let facts get in the way of a good story? No matter how strange they are. There's Rael's claim that he's Christ's half-brother, for instance. Or Centre UFOland's pictures of little green men and its life-size plywood replica of the flying saucer Rael boarded in 1973. Or the Raelian claim of covering a distance of two light years in 25 minutes, sans spacecraft. That's what we're doing here on this frozen Sunday morning.

Brisebois is leading the monthly meditation. She instructs us to breathe deeply. We're about to visit another planet. Only 22 devotees have shown up for the ride. They sit, eyes closed, on orange vinyl chairs. In deference to the weather, no one disrobes. (...)

I don't feel any breeze when Brisebois, an ex-Quebecker, announces that we are flying through the sky. I do notice the Bloor Street subway line rumbling beneath the building every four minutes. (...)

Brisebois announces we've just landed on the planet of the Elohim, one light year from Earth (which is odd, because astronomers say the closest star is four light years away).
(...)

Raelians love publicity. They issue press releases. They stage stunts, like distributing condoms to Montreal high-school students in 1992 to protest against the Catholic Church's stand on birth control. They even have publicists, like Sylvie Chabot, a Montreal consultant whose business cards carry Rael's photo and identify her as "Rael's press attaché."

Raelians also love hierarchy. They group themselves into six levels, ranging from novice to Rael himself, who alone occupies the 6th level. Cocolios is a 3rd-level Raelian and a "regional guide." Chabot, a 4th-level Raelian and a "national guide," sets up an interview with Lear, a 5th-level Raelian.
(...)

"I'll take a little sake, but don't tell Rael," says Lear, smoothing back his longish dark hair, which has bleached tips. Raelians, he explains, aren't supposed to smoke, drink or take drugs, even caffeine. (Chabot also sneaks a cup of sake.)
(...)

Lear, who is 37, became a Raelian at 14. A neighbour in the Quebec village of Lac St.-Jerome gave him The Message Given by Extra-Terrestrials, the first of Rael's half-dozen books. (His latest, Yes to Human Cloning, is about to be published by the sect.)

In the first book, the author describes how, at 27, as an auto-sports journalist and aspiring race driver, he boarded a hovering flying saucer in Auvergne, in southern France, in December, 1973. For six days straight, a little green man explained in fluent French the origin of Earthlings. He also unravelled all those mysteries in the Bible. The miracle of Jesus feeding the multitudes with just 20 loaves of bread, for example, was merely "synthetic dehydrated food -- which, when added to water, increased to five times its original volume."

The space alien informed Claude that his true father was an extra-terrestrial who had impregnated Claude's mother. (The same E.T., by the way, who had earlier inseminated Mary, mother of Jesus.) The alien asked Claude to spread the word and to change his name to Rael, which means "messenger" in space-speak.

Two years later, Rael was whisked to that same planet we visited during the Sunday meditation. There he met Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed. Moses was there, too. It turns out that, like Jesus and Rael, Moses is of mixed parentage (which may explain the confusion in the bulrushes).
(...)

Suddenly Chabot starts talking about green lists and pink lists and blacklists. "Every journalist has one chance," she says, pushing away her plate of sushi. "When we don't like what they write, they're on a blacklist." The pink list, she adds, means the journalist is "pure." She stares at me. "You're on the green list. It means green light, go ahead."
(...)

I may not be on the green list for long, so I quickly request an interview with Rael himself. Like many Quebeckers, cult leaders or no, he winters in Florida. For several years now, he's been the semi-permanent houseguest of a devout Raelian in North Miami Beach. Chabot says Rael gives only one interview a day, for one hour, always at 4:15 p.m.

Why 4:15? "Because this is his schedule."
(...)

It's 4:15 p.m. in North Miami Beach. The only clue about the unusual inhabitant of this stucco bungalow is the white Mazda van in the driveway. Its vanity plate says: RAELIAN.

Marie-Helene Parent, the owner of the house, answers the door. Three other Raelians, all wearing the medallion, are waiting in the living room, which is decorated with the familiar bare-chested photograph of Rael. They don't shake hands. They don't introduce themselves. They don't smile. One woman adjusts a video camera on a tripod. "We always tape," she says. "For the archives."

As if from nowhere, Rael makes his entrance. With his moustache and goatee, he could be mistaken for a magician in a lounge act in Rimouski, Que. At 54, his thinning grey hair is swept up into a tiny bun the size of an apricot. Not counting the topknot, he's a surprisingly scrawny 5-foot-7, and 136 pounds. As usual, he's wearing an all-white outfit straight out of a Star Trek rerun: white turtleneck, white polyester pants and matching top, with a samurai collar and padded sloping shoulders.
(...)

Like Cocolios, Rael gives space-cadet answers to the simplest questions. His mother was Catholic, his father, Jewish -- he thought, until he found out he was half E.T. Forgetting his relationship to Jesus, I ask if he has any siblings. "Not to my knowledge, on Earth," he says gravely.

Rael has never tested his DNA against his Earthling father's. "There is nothing to find," he says. "The genetic code of the Elohim mixed with human people created the Jewish people. It will show you I am Jewish and nothing more."

What does his 82-year-old mom make of her extremely close encounter of the third kind? Rael says that the aliens "erased the memory" of her impregnation. But she does tell him, "I understand now why you were so different from other children."
(...)

A curvaceous young woman enters the room and sprawls on a divan. It's Sophie de Niverville, Rael's current wife, whose bare-breasted photos he displays in abundance at his UFOland condo. She's 25, a second-generation Raelian from Quebec, whom he married nearly 10 years ago, right after her 16th birthday. (Her Raelian mother consented to the match.)
(...)

Like Lear, Rael draws no salary. But he lives well off book royalties and his supporters. All his expenses are covered by Raelian foundations. "People who want to help me buy good food -- Peking duck -- [give me] 1 per cent" of their net income.

We're getting sidetracked. Having read three of his books, I understand why the proposed embassy design calls for a spaceship landing pad. But why the swimming pool and a dining room that seats 21? "I don't know," he says with a shrug. "I just transmit."

The Raelians want to establish their embassy in Jerusalem, for sentimental reasons, because that's where the Elohim ran their first cloning lab. They've asked Israel seven times. Seven times, they've been refused, perhaps because they request demilitarized air space for flying saucers.

I ask Rael how, as a high-school dropout, he managed to become such an expert in biotechnology. He smiles modestly and says that all his knowledge was transmitted to him directly by the Elohim.

By now, the hour is running out. I finally confess that I don't believe they are cloning anything. "People are afraid it's a joke, that there's no lab," Rael cheerfully concedes.
(...)

Rael is unperturbed by my skepticism. "I can give you two scoops," he says graciously. One company is about to organize an initial public offering of Clonaid. And two venture-capital companies have each offered $5-million for 5 per cent. "That means Clonaid is worth $100-million." Of course, he is absolutely not at liberty to disclose anything about the companies at this time. "Ask Brigitte," he says, referring to Boisselier.

And the second scoop? "Brigitte is invited to testify in front of the U.S. Congress."
(...)

Next, Rael offers me yet another scoop. "Your third one today," he says. "It's your lucky day." Rael says that he is offering to share Clonaid's lab with Dr. Severino Antinori, a fertility specialist who has declared his own ambition to clone the world's first human embryo. (The Raelians are not really expecting a response, but they figure the offer will make headlines, since Antinori is rather publicity-mad.)
(...)

We're having high tea at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Montreal. Cocolios has tagged along, as has the watchful Chabot, plus a glamourous and silent Raelian from Japan who seems to go by only one name, Shizue. Female pulchritude is so plentiful at our table that when the waiter whisks away the vase of flowers to make room for finger sandwiches and scones, he gushes, "You don't need these flowers because you are the flowers."

Because caffeine is verboten, three of the women order orange juice. Boisselier, who has two doctoral degrees in chemistry, produces her own tea bag. She's apparently unaware that the Yunnan Tuocha she's drinking is a fermented black Chinese tea buzzing with caffeine.
(...)

Boisselier contradicts Rael over how much the cloning couple has invested in Clonaid. It's $500,000, she says, not $1-million. Of course, she also is absolutely not at liberty to disclose anything about them at this time. She won't even say where Clonaid is headquartered. Ditto for the lab. Ditto for the scientists, except to say there are three, and one works "part-time" at Harvard. When I press her on her genetics credentials, she says her real talent is for organizing research teams.

Like Rael, she readily admits that four years ago, when the Raelians announced they were cloning a human, they had nothing. "We had no lab in the Bahamas. We started a company there. It was so easy. People thought we had something there. We never did."
This is the last stop on my 2001 space odyssey. I tell Boisselier that I don't believe her lab exists. Like Rael, she doesn't get mad. She dangles an exclusive. One journalist -- and only one -- will have a chance to visit her lab and follow the cloning process from beginning to end. I'm duty-bound to go through the motions. How about me? I ask. Boisselier says she doesn't know me. Ask me anything, I offer. Would I agree to embargo the story for 18 months from now? Sure, I say. "But we have a lot of candidates," she says, ending the discussion.
(...)

Last fall, Boisselier told The New York Times that Clonaid would clone a baby this winter. In January, she told Time magazine that they would start in February. In February she told Saturday Night magazine that they would clone in March. (The magazine ran a luscious photo of Cocolios with this caption: "If all goes according to plan, by the time you read this she'll be pregnant with a clone.")

So what is she going to tell me?

"We hope to have an embryo by mid-April."
[...more...] [Need the full story? Read this]