Maa Publicity Department + J.B. Lippincott Company + Trade Division
* 521 5th Avenue e New York, New York 10017 e 212-687-3980

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 7, 1978

From: Ofanitia Hutcheson

In response to the demand for infonnation on IN HIS IMAGE: The Cloning of a
Man by David M. Rorvik, the book's publisher, J. B. Lippincott Company, is able to

make available the following statement fron Mr. Rorvik:

"My decision to recruit the medical talent required to clone a human being
came after a long period of soul-searching. Ultimately I became convinced that
the project would eventually proceed with or without me. Moreover, I saw the
opportunity to impose some restraints on this effort. I made it a condition of my
involvement that 1 be allowed to inform the public, in some fashion, of this work
so that its outcome might serve a purpose more useful than the mere ego satisfaction
of a single individual. It is my hope that this first successful cloning of a human
being will alert the public to the far more promising and also far more perilous
developments already occurring in the realm of genetic engineering. I have regarded
my role in this as that of a 'watchdog,' as much as a "go-between.’ I have consist-
ently sought to safeguard the welfare of egg donors, surrogates and, finally, the
child himself. I have seen the child since his birth. He is alive, healthy and
loved today, .

“Obviously, I take strong issue with those who assert that human cloning is
still out of scientific reach. The best-informed experts have been predicting for

years that human cloning would occur at almost any time. What was needed were the

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resources, both human and economic, but more important, in my view, was the will to
succeed. Certainly you cannot do what you do not try to do. In the ten years since
Dr. J. B. Gurdon of Oxford University first succeeded in cloning frogs, no one has
previously gone on record as having attempted to clone a human or even, with one

or two possible exceptions, a mammal of any description. My painstaking search of
the literature reveals only one paper in the English ianguage that reports upon an
effort to clone a mammal. That report appeared in the December 25 issue of Nature.
It is entitled ‘Nuclear Transplantation in the Rabbit Egg,' and was authored by

Dr. J. D. Bromhall at Oxford University. Dr. Bromhal} was once the student of

Dr. Gurdon. What is so remarkable about his report is that it shows that a single
researcher, working with limited funds, was apparently still able to create three
seemingly normal rabbit embryos through the cloning process. His research effort,
however, was not geared up for implantation of these embryos into Surrogate mothers.
Bromhall indicated to me that he knew of no other recorded efforts to clone lower
mammals or men though he said he thought some others might be trying in secret. His
funding ran out shortly after he began getting promising results. Bromhall's partial
Success was achieved through a cell-fusion process that removes many of the diffi-
culties of working with tiny mammalian eggs. Earlier researchers, working with the
much larger frog eggs, used microsurgical techniques with which it is much easier to
damage cells. A refinement of existing cell-fusion techniques was used in the first
successful cloning of a man--a feat achieved by a team with millions of dollars at
its disposal. Though so far as I know Bromhal] is the only researcher on record
(outside of the Soviet Union, where success at mammalian Cloning is claimed) as
having attempted to clone a mammal, there are several other researchers whose work
has greatly advanced the state-of-the-art in cell fusion. These researchers have
also published their work. It does not take a great deal of imagination to see how

their findings can, with various alterations, be productively applied to the

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Cloning task, even though this was not the goal of their work. Those who wish to
acquaint themselves with this valuable work would do well to examine the cell-fusion
papers of such researchers as Roger Laddo and Richard Estensen of the Walter Reed
Army Institute of Research in Washington, D.C., and K. K. Sethi and H. Brandis at
the Institute of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Bonn,
West Germany, Dr. Christopher Graham of Oxford University, Dr. Hilary Koprowski of
the Wistor Institute of the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Beatrice Mintz of the
Institute for Cancer Research in Philadelphia and Audrey Muggleton-Harris and L.
Hayblick.

"Among those who have predicted that human Cloning would occur long before
most scientists expected are Nobel Prize winners Joshua Lederberg and James Watson,
noted geneticist Kurt Hirschhorn and such respected biologists as Bently Glass and
Robert Sinsheimer. Dr. Sinsheimer predicted in 1968 that human Cloning wuld
probably occur within ten years of that date.

“Several scientists have described what they regard as potentially useful
applications of human Cloning. Or. James Danielli, a member of the team that first
created a living cell in the test tube, has stated that multiple copies of a single
individual placed in different environments would clear up many of the questions
related to the ‘nature-versuS-nurture' or heredity-versus-environment controversy.
Dr. Bernard Davis of the Harvard Medical School has suggested cloning individuals
who he felt might ‘enormously enhance our culture.' Dr. Lederberg has speculated
that cloning might help close the ‘generation gap' with empathetic clonists in-
structing their own clonal young. Others have pointed out that there would be no
tissue or organ rejection among members of a common clone.

"Feats of genetic engineering are already being achieved in laboratories
around the world that are both more difficus t and far more Cangerous than human

Cloning. I refer here to ‘recombinant DNA' work in which the genetic material of

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unlike organisms can now be spliced together in the lab to create new life forms,
some of which we may be ill-equipped to deal with. The man who led the successful
effort to clone a human, a doctor code-named ‘Darwin,’ in my book, once said to

me that the worst he might be guilty of would be to have cloned a Single individual
who, over an entire lifetime might, as he put it, ‘turn out to be a pain in the
neck.' Meanwhile, however, some of his colleagues who are critical of cloning,
Darwin said, are busy creating new viruses and bacteria which, if they escape from
their laboratory 'cages,' and gain a selective advantage, could lethally infect
the entire world in a matter of months, weeks or even days. It wasn't long ago,
as a matter of fact, that the research wing of a major corporation had to quickly
destroy one of their new recombinant ‘bugs.' Science Magazine, commenting on the
episode, characterized it as a ‘close call' and said that one possible consequence
of this new life form getting out of the lab might have been a global epidemic of
incurable, and probably terminal intestinal disorder.

"It is time that the press and the public become more aware of the hazards
as well as the great promise of the new genetic research, of which human cloning
might be said to be a relatively benign, albeit very dramatic, manifestation. If
the drama of human cloning can alert the world to perils far blacker and promises
far grander than those embraced by that drama then I cannot but conclude that
humanity will be well-served by my having related the events that have been so

large a part of my life for the past several years."

Lippincott is taking steps to accelerate the manufacturing schedule of IN HIS
IMAGE in order to have books available for « March 3] publication date so that
everyone will have access to the full story aS soon as possible.

Edward L. Burlingame, Senior Vice-President and Editor-in-Chief of the Adult

Trade Division of J. B. Lippincott Company states that "David Rorvik visited the

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J. B. Lippincott New York Trade Division offices in 1977 and described the
extraordinary events recounted in IN HIS IMAGE. te explained, however, that he
had pledged not to reveal to anyone the identities of the other participants,
which made it impossible for us te authenticate his story. We deliberated as to
whether we should publish it under these circumstances.

“Mr. Rorvik was an experienced writer in the field of human biology and a
recipient of awards and fellowships for distinction in science writing. The book
he proposed to write would inevitably arouse much controversy, but would explore
scientific, social, moral and religious issues of great import. We believed he

would treat these issues in a revealing, responsible manner, and we decided to

publish it."

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