December 30, 2002	Monday	Shawwal 25, 1423

WASHINGTON, Dec 29: US authorities on Sunday said they have launched a probe into a sect’s highly controversial claim that it has created the first human clone.

A cult known as the Raelian movement, which believes that human beings were originally created by extraterrestrials and that cloning is a path to immortality, claimed Friday to have created the first-ever carbon copy of a human.

The birth of the alleged baby girl clone named “Eve” has yet to be confirmed by independent experts.

“We are going to probe the circumstances surrounding this alleged cloning. And we’ve started steps to look into that,” US Food and Drug Administration spokesman Brad Stone said.

He said that although the sect, through its Las Vegas, Nevada-based company Clonaid, claimed to have done the cloning outside the United States, the FDA would still look into it.

“We want to check and see, first, whether the cloning did take place, and second, if it violated any of our laws,” he said.

Although human cloning is not illegal in the United States, any kind of human trials would have required FDA approval as of 1998, Stone said.

“We inspected some facilities that (the Raelian sect) had in West Virginia in 2001 and had discussions with them which resulted in an agreement by them not to conduct any of their cloning research within the United States,” he said.

Clonaid has been fighting to protect its credibility since the announcement made by its chief, Brigitte Boisselier, a French chemist and a bishop in the Raelian sect which believes that humans were cloned from extraterrestrials who came to Earth 25,000 years ago.

Leaders from around the world reacted to the announcement with skepticism and outrage.

The Vatican called the announcement an “expression of a brutal mentality, devoid of any humane or ethical considerations,” while French President Jacques Chirac said cloning a human being should be made a worldwide crime.

The United Nations raised doubts about the report, citing a lack of scientific evidence.

“In the absence of scientific data, we can’t automatically accept it as a fact,” said Fred Eckhard, a spokesman for Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Boisselier said an independent journalist would monitor verification tests on the mother, a 31-year-old American woman, and the baby, who would be an exact copy of the mother.

Results of those tests were expected by the end of next week.

Meanwhile, US lawmakers expressed dismay on Sunday that the United States did not have tougher laws banning such practices.

“I think that we need very strong sanctions to prevent human cloning,” Senator Dianne Feinstein told Fox News Sunday, adding that Democrats “have put together a bill” that includes such sanctions.

However, Feinstein said the cloning of human stem cells from unfertilized, donated eggs for research purposes would continue under that legislation.

In June, the House of Representatives approved a bill banning human cloning, but the Senate did not follow suit, fearing a total ban would hurt the potential for advancing medical research.

The administration of President George W. Bush has said it plans to make another attempt to pass a bill banning all forms of cloning in the next congressional session, which begins in January.

“We don’t have a single cure” stemming from animal-cloning research, Senator Sam Brownback told Fox.

“Why should we be creating cloned humans for research purposes now?” he asked. The Raelians have said 20 more baby clones are expected in the next year, the first of which is due to be born next week to a North American couple living in Europe.

Boisselier said “the parents (of Eve) are happy” and urged the media not to treat the baby like “a monster” or “something that is disgusting.”

Raelians believe cloning is the key to eternal life, allowing human consciousness to be downloaded into successive bodies. Their leader, former French journalist Claude Vorilhon, started the movement after claiming to have met an alien who told him extraterrestrials had been working to perfect human DNA technology for tens of thousands of years.—AFP