Iowa's Clandestine Cloning Ranches

Poweshiek: The news of Dolly the self-procreating Scottish sheep comes as no surprise to me. I have know for a long time the inevitability that the last hurdle in discovering a viable way to transfer the nuclear matter from one cell into another so that its DNA code might re-direct the growth of the cell and thence an entire animal was only a year or so away. This is basic cloning. The procedure is so simple that we might all be able to perform the feat in our own kitchens or bathtubs if only we could have the precision tools that task required.

     It is also a procedure that generated billions of dollars, resulted in the abuse and slaughter of thousands of innocent children, and made one man be a father to his perfect twin.

     It was a curious twist of Fate's unseen hand when a bull-semen broker named Oscar Hansen received a bank statement saying that .5 million had been deposited into his account. Hansen had just started his business a little over a month before and dealt mainly with local farmers and ranchers, so the sudden influx of vast amounts of cash both marveled and mystified him. So too, the FBI.

     "I didn't know what was happening. These three agents showed up at my door and started telling that if I knew what was good for me, I'd tell them everything. I said, 'I didn't know anything. The money just showed up in my account.' And then they showed me the search warrant and pretty much trashed the house."

     Because of a simple data entry error made by a worker drone somewhere in the basement of a bank, Hansen had become unwillingly involved in a national money laundering scheme built around a what was registered with the Iowa State Department of Commerce as an "Organ Transplant Matching Service". SkyView Services, Inc., was based at the Sky View Ranch near Ottawa City. For all intensive purposes, the ranch seemed the perfect example of western Iowa cattle and sheep ranching, except for one horrible difference: Sky View Ranch was raising children by the hundreds for the sole express purpose of supplying replacement organs.

     "When we realized that Hansen's involvement was all a mistake," explains Agent Donald Welsh of the Minneapolis FBI Field Office, "we invited him to help us out. We offered to set him up as a very wealthy cattle breeding consultant with lung cancer. We provided all the medical and financial information and then sent him to see the physician we knew was the contact for the whole operation."

     Dr. Harold Straus of Pekin, Illinois, examined Hansen at his office on December 12, 1995. Unbeknownst to Dr. Straus, Hansen had been given an engineered-hormone injection that gave him the some of symptoms of a serious lung ailment. That, and a quick examination of Hansen's doctored medical records led Dr. Straus to make an offer to Hansen that was picked up on a concealed microphone:

    

     STRAUS: It looks pretty bad for you, I'm afraid. And from what your doctor says, you can only hope for about two years at best. But I think you might be the kind of person a very top notch research group may be looking for. I'm not promising you anything. Since you're in the cattle breeding business, I'm sure you know what 'cloning' is. This group can grow organs from your DNA. Now there is a slight fee...

     HANSEN: How much is this 'slight fee'?

     STRAUS: Ten thousand dollars. Hey, we're talking about your life, here.

     Hansen was instructed to wait and that he would be contacted within the week. Not long after this interview with Straus, Hansen was asked to visit the nearby Sky View Ranch and meet with Dr. Michael Radford. According to University of Emmetsburg documents, Dr. Radford had formerly been head lecturer and research scientist at the prestigious Human Genome Research Program from 1990 to 1994 when he left under what the university termed "strained relations" with other researchers in the program.

     Hansen's meeting with Radford initially consisted mostly of routine medical questions about his cancer as well as his financial status. Then, Dr. Radford asked a series of particularly sinister questions:

     RADFORD: How much to you want to stay alive?

     HANSEN: Alot. What do you mean?

     RADFORD: Enough to kill? Would the life of another prey too much on your conscious?

     HANSEN: Yes, I could kill, but I don't see...Hey, if you think I'm supposed to hunt and kill my own donor...

     RADFORD: Nothing so barbaric. Let me speak plainly; if someone, say, an innocent person, would die during a purely medical procedure, and you would stand to benefit from a transplant of their organs, would you be opposed in anyway?

     HANSEN: Of course not.

     Shortly afterwards, Dr. Radford had Hansen sign a release form. The form relieved Dr. Radford and his staff from any legal responsibility for any infection Hansen might suffered as a result of taking a tissue sample, that the tissue legally belonged to Hansen, and that any legal and financial responsibility governing the ultimate development and fate of the tissue sample belonged solely to Hansen. Hansen signed the document and Dr. Radford removed a small strip of tissue from the inside of Hansen's mouth.

     What did develop, took thirteen months. It was then in the middle of February, 1997 that Dr. Radford summoned Hansen to the Sky View Ranch. He was to bring enough clothes for lengthy stay.

     'Don't be alarmed,' he says. 'It's important for you to believe me when I say that this is just some enhanced tissue created to save your life. You must believe this, otherwise I cannot proceed. And you will die, Mr. Hansen. Do you believe me?'

     "I guess I was in shock but I heard it say something---like baby talk, it just sort of gurgled. I heard one of the nurses humming to it. So Radford nudges her to stop.

     'Alright,' I says, 'Let's do it!' That was also the signal to the FBI agents down the road to hit the place. As soon as Radford turned his back, I snagged a towel from a tray, jumped on his back, and wrapped the towel round his throat. We fell back across one of the instrument trays and wound up on the floor. I squeezed the towel tightly around his throat, but one of the nurses came up and kicked me in the side. Radford got up and grabbed a scalpel but by then I was on my feet. He slashed at me but I dodged it and got the towel into the tub of saline they used for bathing organs.

     It's kinda funny what you think of when you're fighting. There I was naked in a tiled room holding nothing but a towel and of course I thought of highschool and rat-tail fights. So, I twist up that towel and let it fly right at Radford's face. Really smacked him hard; hit him right in the eye and he hit the floor. Then the nurse who kicked me tried to jab me with a syringe but I caught her in the ear. That gave me just enough time to grab the scalpel from Radford and hold it to his throat until the assault squad came."

     When Agent Welsh's team searched the grounds of the Sky View Ranch, they uncovered the graves of 1200 children, ages ranging between 8 and 15. According to documents, the children were precise clones manufactured by Radford and his team from tissue samples supplied by wealthy patients all over the world for organ donation. The children gestated in tanks where their growth and development was accelerated with hormonal and genetic therapies to make their organs readily suited for transplanting. More than 80 children between the chronological ages of 1 and 16 were discovered alive in a dormitory/nursery on the ranch and have been shipped off to emergency foster homes through out the state. Twenty-six fetuses in varying states of development however, have been left on site and are being monitored by special medical consultants.

     While Agent Welsh and his colleagues thought Sky View Ranch was the only such facility in the state, documents discovered at the ranch hint at something disturbingly different.

     "We have indications that there are possibly 5 other such operations going on in the state," says Agent Welsh. "And we know this isn't something we can root-out over night. It's going to take a some time."

     It is thought that Dr. Radford not only saved the patients who came to him but also blackmailed them for the murders of the clones he created to save them. Little doubt remains that his defense attorney will use the signed release forms stating that the clones are merely "altered tissue samples" wholly the property of those they came from.

     Agent Welsh thinks the 1200 children's graves mean different.

     "The guy was a cold-blooded killer. He was the man in that room holding the knife; the man trained to 'do no harm' as the medical oath goes---not to play God."

     Asked about the fate of the boy cloned from Oscar Hansen, Welsh stated he was released into Hansen's custody adding, "He is Hansen's flesh and blood, after all."