"The FDA was slow to respond to the claims of the Raelians--probably because they did not take them seriously," says Murray. "The jurisdictional authority the FDA was claiming may be a stretch, and the sanctions may not be very strong." Jaenisch accused would-be cloners of bad science for disregarding the dangers of human cloning in a recent article (R. Jaenisch, I. Wilmut, "Don't Clone Humans!" Science, 291:2552, March 30, 2001). House committee chairman Billy Tauzin, (R-La.) commented that legislation banning human cloning would be aggressively sought. Sean Tipton, ASRM spokesman, hopes that such legislation would specifically restrict "transfer of a cloned embryo for gestation and birth," and not impede other types of research.
News Notes
A single all-embracing effort to characterize the human proteome is an unlikely prospect (D. Steinberg, "Is a Human Proteome Project Next?" The Scientist, 15[7]:1, April 2, 2001). Nevertheless, smaller-scale--though still massive--proteomics projects keep springing up. On April 4, Myriad Genetics Inc. (MGI), Hitachi Ltd., and Oracle Corp. announced a $185 million, three-year collaboration to identify all protein-protein interactions and biochemical pathways in the human body. Myriad Proteomics I

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