Chemist promises human cloning announcement

A chemist who said her company would soon produce the world’s first human clone – a baby girl genetically identical to her 30-year-old mother – was due to make an announcement today.

A spokeswoman for Brigitte Boisselier and the company, Clonaid, declined to answer directly when asked if they would claim to have produced the world’s first cloned baby.

But the spokeswoman, Nadne Gary, said yesterday that Boisselier intended to have video equipment at a news briefing in Florida and would have an “independent inspector” take DNA evidence from baby and mother. If the baby was a clone of the mother, the two would be genetically identical.

Many scientists are sceptical about Clonaid’s ability to accomplish the feat. The company was founded in the Bahamas in 1997 by Claude Vorilhon, a former French journalist and leader of a group called the Raelians. Vorilhon and his followers claim aliens visiting him in the 1970s revealed they had created all life on Earth through genetic engineering.

Cloning produces a new individual using only one person’s DNA. The process is technically difficult but conceptually simple. Scientists remove the genetic material from an unfertilised egg, then introduce new DNA from a cell of the animal to be cloned. Under the proper conditions, the egg begins dividing into new cells according to the instructions in the introduced DNA.

Boisselier, who claims two chemistry degrees and was previously marketing director for a chemical company in France, identifies herself as a Raelian “bishop” and said Clonaid retained philosophical but not economic links to the Raelians. She is not a specialist in reproductive medicine.

Human cloning for reproductive purposes is banned in several countries. There is no specific law against it in the United States, but the Food and Drug Administration says it must approve any human experiments in the country. Boisselier would not say where Clonaid had been carrying out its experiments.

Bush administration officials said in Washington yesterday that they were aware of rumours of an announcement but had no plans to comment on the matter until after the details were known.

Boisselier’s comments last week came several weeks after Italian fertility doctor Severino Antinori said he had engineered a cloned baby boy who would be born in January.

So far scientists have succeeded in cloning sheep, mice, cows, pigs, goats and cats. Last year, scientists in Massachusetts produced cloned human embryos with the intention of using them as a source of stem cells, but the cloned embryos never grew bigger than six cells.

Many scientists oppose cloning to produce humans, saying it is too risky because of abnormalities seen in cloned animals.