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Tuesday January 17, 2006
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Raelian UFO Cult offers Disgraced Korean Cloner a Job
By Hilary White
GENEVA, January 17, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo is reporting that a “US biotech firm” has offered the disgraced Korean cloning researcher, Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, a job. The firm, Clonaid, has been discredited as a sham associated with “Raelians”, a UFO cult that claims humans were planted on Earth by benevolent extraterrestrials.
The cult’s spokesman, Brigitte Boisselier, writing on Clonaid’s website, accuses “religious powers,” for Hwang’s downfall saying it was engineered and that his research results were tampered with. “We also believe that…he has been discredited as he wasn't in line with what the political and religious powers of this world wanted regarding the cloning technology,” Boisselier writes.
The UFO cult made headlines when its leader, a former French sports journalist who calls himself “Rael,” appeared at a US congressional hearing on cloning. He claims that Jesus, the Buddha, and other religious figures were actually cloned by extraterrestrials and living in “UFOland.” Rael, whose real name is Claude Vorilhon, maintains that cloning will create a paradise where people will live forever.
Hwang, a former Catholic, has indeed been vigorously opposed by the Korean Catholic Church that supports stem cell research that does not involve the creating and killing of human clones. In October 2005, the Archdiocese of Seoul said it would provide 10 billion won (US$9.6 million) for ethical adult stem cell research.
The falsification of cloning reports should make Hwang an ideal candidate for Clonaid and the Raelians who, in 2002, were claiming to have created cloned children and implanted them in female volunteers for gestation. The hoax was exposed when no children or verifiable data were ever produced.
Hwang, however, is unlikely to join the organization. In June 2005, referring to the creation of cloned children for “reproductive purposes, Hwang told an interviewer, “Cloning a human being is nonsense. Briefly, it is not ethical, it is not safe at all, and it’s technically impossible.”
The characterization of the Raelians in the Korean press as a legitimate scientific research organization is not shared by the US State Department that is aware of its anti-Catholic propaganda activities. In its report on religious intolerance for 2003, the State Department noted, “The Raelian Church of Canada, an officially recognized religion in Quebec, had targeted Quebec high schools as part of its ongoing campaign to persuade Roman Catholics to renounce their faith.”
Visit the Realian website:
http://www.rael.org/
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Cloners in State of Complete Moral Disconnect
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/jun/05060809.html
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