By Mark Wachtler
July 6, 2012. London. (ONN) Recent articles have announced that the world’s first genetically modified babies have been born. The only problem is that the news is ten years old and much more innocent than being reported in the independent press. If anything, the truly frightening discovery made this week was that the world’s premier scientist in the field of human gene modification now works for the US military.
Google the words, ‘human genetic modification’ and this is what comes up. Image courtesy of Dr. Steve Best.
The ten year-old article from the UK’s Daily Mail is titled, ‘World’s first GM babies born’. It describes how 15 babies were born in the United States as part of a genetic modification experiment at the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science of St. Barnabas in New Jersey. If those children were conceived in 2001, the children would be roughly 10 years old by now. Unfortunately, the Daily Mail article is undated and it is now making its rounds through the internet being portrayed as current breaking news.
In reality, the Institute’s Professor Jacques Cohen had announced that his experiment’s result, “is the first case of human germline genetic modification resulting in normal healthy children.” Cohen’s tactic allows infertile women to conceive children. The professor discovered that injecting extra genes from a fertile female donor into the eggs of an infertile woman before they’re fertilized sparked life into the previously infertile eggs.
The problem comes with the ethics of the procedure. After injecting the donor genes, the egg’s DNA is altered to reflect the genes of two unrelated women instead of just one. Normal babies are created from the genes of one woman and one man. These babies were tested after being born and do in fact contain the genes of two women and one man.
As reported in the Daily Mail, ‘Altering the human germline – in effect tinkering with the very make-up of our species – is a technique shunned by the vast majority of the world’s scientists. Geneticists fear that one day this method could be used to create new races of humans with extra, desired characteristics such as strength or high intelligence’.
Just this past week, reprints of the 2001 article have been distributed throughout cyberspace as a current discovery, conjuring up images of clone armies and 7 foot tall super humans. In fact, this author searched for supporting documentation to write an article for Whiteout Press. Something was amiss however. There was no supporting information, not even from the reproductive Institute that carried out the much publicized experiment.
That’s when the UK’s Rebecca Taylor and LifeNews.com stepped in three days ago. Taylor’s research discovered that the Daily Mail article about the 15 genetically modified American babies was actually more than a decade old. She also surprisingly discovered that the lead scientist in the successful human genetic modification experiment is currently the Laboratory Director at ART Institute of Washington at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Taylor then remarks, ‘A fact that I find very disturbing’. That makes two of us. What purpose would the US Military have with the world’s foremost expert in genetic modification and fertility? Back to the subject, a quick investigation by both Taylor and this author found no facilities or organizations publicly performing the gene-modifying fertility treatment currently. Legal or not, that doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t happening – especially if the US government’s now involved.
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