Dr. Strangeseed?

Donna Shalala, Secretary of Health and Human Services, took one look at Dr. Richard Seed on TV over the weekend and said she thought "mad scientist." It's not hard to see why, even without seeing what the man looks like.

Dr. Seed, who has announced a plan to open a human-cloning clinic, sounds more like an evangelist than the physicist and Harvard Ph.D. that he is.

"God intended for man to become one with God," he intoned last week when announcing his project. "Cloning and the reprogramming of DNA is the first serious step in becoming one with God."

The extraordinarily named Dr. Seed, an independent fertility researcher with no current academic affiliation, is seeking believers who will put up the money to get his for-profit clinic started. He has doctors and "volunteers" already, he says, though not the $1 million he estimates it will cost to produce the first human clone.

"If I find a customer who will pay for it, he or she goes to the top of the list," Dr. Seed declared.

Leaving aside the serious ethical questions involved, does this sound like a serious scientist engaged in the kind of research that will advance human potential? Or is Dr. Shalala's instinct correct? Are we dealing here with a Dr. Strangeseed?

Whichever the case, human cloning is once again, a year after Dolly the sheep, the focus of world attention - this time urgently so. Nineteen European countries have entered into a pact to ban it, and this nation will almost certainly enact a similar law in short order.

For that much, at least, we have Dr. Seed to thank.