SEOUL, July 24: South Korean authorities on Wednesday launched a probe into experiments by Clonaid, a US-based human cloning company associated with the Raelin movement, which believes that life on Earth was created in laboratories by extraterrestrials.

Clonaid’s Korean affiliate, BioFusion Tech of the southern city of Daegu, announced on Tuesday that a Korean woman was pregnant with an embryo cloned by Clonaid, prompting the investigation.

BioFusion said the human clone could be born in South Korea or abroad in six months.

“The probe started today with four investigators sent to a BioFusion lab in Daegu,” Lee Doo-Ri, a health and welfare ministry spokesman, said.

South Korea has no regulations to stop Clonaid’s work because parliament has yet to approve a bill drafted by the health ministry in July to ban human cloning.

However, the ministry did not rule out a criminal investigation using other medical regulations.

“Criminal charges will be brought against BioFusion if it conducted experiments against laws governing medical practice,” Lee said.

Since human cloning requires artificial insemination and reintroduction of the fertilized egg into the host, BioFusion needed the assistance of medical doctors.

BioFusion spokesman Kwak Gi-Hwa said three of 10 Korean women who signed up to act as surrogate mothers were involved in the experiment and one of them, pregnant with a cloned fetus, returned home a month earlier. “She has a cloned embryo which was implanted into her about two months ago,” Kwak said.

“The operation was carried out outside South Korea and therefore, the government has no right to meddle with it. She would leave the country if the authorities continue harassing us,” he said.—AFP