FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The legal effort to appoint a guardian to protect the rights of the world’s alleged first human clone ended in Broward Circuit Court on Wednesday and may now shift to Israel.
The head of Clonaid, the group that claims to have produced the first cloned baby, testified under oath Wednesday that “Baby Eve” is, and always has been, someplace other than here.
“I can tell you this baby is not in the United States and has never been in the United States,” Clonaid’s chief executive and top scientist Brigitte Boisselier said. “This baby is in Israel.”
Broward Circuit Judge John Frusciante had to order Boisselier to answer his questions about where the baby, born Dec. 26, is located. The judge then said he had no choice but to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a private attorney, asking for a lawyer to be appointed to ensure the baby — if she exists — is getting whatever medical care she needs.
Frusciante said he dismissed the case reluctantly and only because he could not claim jurisdiction over the baby because of Boisselier’s testimony that the baby has never been in the country and her parents do not live in Florida.
If the child had ever passed through Florida, Frusciante said, he would have continued to hear the case until he was satisfied she was safe and getting appropriate medical care.
Even after hearing Boisselier testify under oath that Baby Eve was cloned, the judge indicated he was very skeptical about whether that was true. He also lectured Boisselier on her ethical responsibilities.
“At this point, I’m not giving any more credibility to this than it has already been given,” Frusciante added. Boisselier is a bishop in the Raelian religious sect, whose members believe life on earth was started by extra-terrestrials.
The judge urged child welfare agencies and government officials in Israel to try to determine whether the baby is safe. He said he hoped officials in any country who suspected the presence of a cloned child would attempt to ensure the child’s welfare.
After Wednesday’s hearing Bernard Siegel, the Coral Gables attorney who filed court papers seeking protection for Baby Eve, said he hopes an attorney or agency in Israel will investigate the child’s welfare.
“I wanted to try to raise the child-advocacy issue,” Siegel said. “Not every country in the world bans cloning, but practically every country has child abuse laws. I hope this can be a braking mechanism to rogue scientists who want to clone irresponsibly.”
The judge did not force Boisselier to disclose where the alleged cloning took place. She said pediatricians are caring for the child somewhere in Israel. She could not supply the exact address, Boisselier said, because the baby’s parents took flight about a week ago.
As she left the courtroom, Boisselier would not share any substantive information about Baby Eve.
When she announced with great fanfare at the end of December that Baby Eve had been born to U.S. citizens, Boisselier said the child would undergo independent DNA testing. She later backed off that promise, claiming that the lawsuit filed in Broward County had made the child’s parents fearful the baby would be taken away from them.
On Wednesday, she said Baby Eve would undergo DNA testing “when I’m sure the baby is safe.”
She said the other two babies that Clonaid claims to have produced, in the Netherlands and Japan, also will be proven to be clones — but would not give any schedule for testing. She would not say when she plans to have her claims authenticated by her peers, which is standard in the scientific field.
(c) 2003 Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.