July 11, 2002	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 29, 1423

TOKYO, July 10: A team of scientists from Clonaid, a human cloning company linked with the Raelian movement, were working with “10 to 20 clients” on the firm’s human cloning project, an official from the company said on Wednesday.

“We chose them from a client list of a couple of thousand people,” said Thomas Kaenzig, vice president of Clonaid.

“We are working with about 50 surrogate mothers,” he said, adding that the company would present some results of its project “in a couple of months time.”

Kaenzig was speaking at the first International Bio Expo Japan, a medical industry trade show that showcased products and services from about 250 Japanese and foreign exhibitors, including Du Pont and Roche Diagnostics.

Clonaid showed off its “embryonic cell fusion system,” which, Kaenzig said, creates the stable electronic pulse required to develop human embryos to the blastocyst stage.

That is the stage generally about five or six days after fertilization at which the embryo is made up of about 100 to 150 cells.

The device, the RMX 2010 which resembles a car battery, and is for sale at $9,000, was manufactured by BioFusion Tech Inc. of South Korea, a Clonaid affiliate established about two months ago.

The “2010” designation reflected the hope that cloning would be commonplace by year 2010, said Jung Yung Pyo, sales director at BioFusion Tech.

Despite a promise on the company’s website that it would present partial results of its cloning process at the fair, Kaenzig, a Swiss native and Raelian follower, declined to say how far the group is from bringing the first human clone into the world.

Kaenzig said, however, the company had created “a few hundred” human blastocysts and “you know what the next step is.”—AFP