Public fiction as knowledge production: the case of the Raëlians' cloning claims

Abstract

In this article, I follow the construction of the public fiction of the 2002 Raëlians' cloning claims as a site of liminal, or transitional, space for scientific knowledge production. In 2002, the Raëlians, a new religious movement, announced the successful birth of Baby Eve, allegedly, the first clone. Baby Eve was quickly denounced as a hoax. Within the media frenzy that led up to and followed Baby Eve's birth, the voices of a core set of pro-cloning scientists emerged as experts in constructing human cloning. These experts used the Raëlians' claims to settle several controversies about human cloning: reproductive cloning was unethical while therapeutic cloning was desirable; scientists who advocated reproductive cloning were immoral; and human cloning was too complex to be achieved by anyone working outside mainstream scientific institutions. Though Baby Eve is undoubtedly a fictional construct, she offered the world an important opportunity to engage the science fiction-like implications of human cloning as if they were real.