Company 'close' to producing first human clone

The first human clone is likely to be produced "very soon", according to an American scientist.

Brigitte Boisselier, director of scientific company Clonaid, has said that the project is on schedule.

She refused to be drawn on when it was likely to be and what stage the project was at.

She was speaking as she revealed the project had been put under pressure to stop its work by the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which oversees medical experiments in the country.

Clonaid, based in Syracuse, New York, is working for the Raelians, a cult which believes cloning will lead to eternal life but has now closed its American laboratory and is working at a secret location.

The FDA wrote to her and said she should stop experiments until the law in America on cloning is clarified, prompting the firm to move its operation abroad.

Two bills which would outlaw human cloning are currently being considered by America's House of Representatives but Ms Boisselier said she believed cloning was a right.

She said: "My goal is as it always has been: a very healthy baby. The right of an individual to use his own genes as he wants is a basic human freedom. It's a pity that may not happen (in the US) because this is the most advanced country for science."

The cloning company's first customers and main financial backers are the Canadian parents of a baby boy who died at 10 months and who want their son back.

They are members of the cult and want to use their dead baby's DNA to create a replica. Human cloning is banned in Britain and the rest of Europe, as well as Canada, making the US one of the few countries not to outlaw it.