WASHINGTON, Nov 27: One of the researchers who claimed this week to have cloned a human embryo defended his work on Tuesday and invited the White House and Congress to consult with his team about the ethics.

Jose Cibelli, the veterinarian and expert in cloning technology who led the study, said his company aimed only to turn back the clock in aging and cure disease.

“When cloning works properly, it will reset the clock,” Cibelli told a meeting of the National Research Council.

“The implications are terrific in medicine,” he added. “Imagine, if you can, having a new immune system when you (reach) your 70s.”

Cibelli’s company, Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Massachusetts, announced on Sunday it had created three human cloned embryos and had induced a human egg to start dividing on its own as if it had been fertilized.

The company said it did not aim to create a human baby but to make tiny embryos that could be a source of stem cells — the body’s master cells that can produce any kind of tissue or organ. Eventually the company wants to come up with custom-made medical treatments or even organ transplants.

“What we are proposing is very controversial right now but we think it is the future of medicine,” Cibelli told the meeting called by the council, an arm of the National Academies of Science, to advise the government on the safety issues surrounding animal cloning.

“We have 136 million people who can be impacted by this technology,” he added, producing a long list of Americans who suffer from illnesses such as heart disease, Alzheimer’s, AIDS and cancer.

Opponents of embryo research, including U.S. President George W. Bush, denounced the research as immoral.

“We should not as a society grow life to destroy it, and that’s exactly what’s taking place,” Bush said on Monday.

Cibelli responded mildly.

“It’s the way he thinks,” he told reporters. “We disagree on that. One would hope that he would get good advice in this area.”

He offered to meet with the White House and lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

“Perhaps we need to go to the administration,” Cibelli said. “Hopefully we can make a strong case that this can be done in the United States and we can even dream that federal funds can be used.”

Under former President Bill Clinton, federal funds were opened for use in embryonic stem cell research, so long as government-funded researchers did not create the embryos themselves. The Bush administration limited this to colonies of stem cells that existed before Aug. 6.

Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, said he hoped the Senate could move this year to ban all cloning. But he was prevented from forcing a vote on Tuesday.

Cibelli said opinions on whether working with embryos constitutes murder were extremely personal. “I don’t think it is the creation of a human being. It is just a new way of making medicine,” he said.

“We made public in advance that we were pursuing this objective,” he added. “We strongly believe that if you have data like this, you have to put it out as soon as possible.”

Several experts in cloning and stem cell research criticized the company’s report, saying it was not difficult to get an egg cell to divide four or six times on its own.

Cibelli agreed “they are probably right,” but said his team still felt the need to publicize the findings.

It will take a long time to find out more, because human donor eggs are hard to obtain and because of the ethics and bureaucracy involved any time a human volunteer is used.

Cow eggs can be retrieved from a slaughterhouse, but to get human eggs a woman of the right age must volunteer, she must be briefed and tested to make sure she is aware of the consequences, and she must undergo hormone treatment to make her body produce the ripe eggs.

Scientists also denounced the company’s chief executive officer, Michael West, for making the announcement in U.S. News and World Report and Scientific American magazines and on Sunday morning television talk shows instead of in a scholarly journal.

“Maybe we were wrong,” Cibelli agreed. But he said the company wanted to get word out as quickly as possible and scientific journals take months to publish reports because of a lengthy process of peer review, in which other scientists evaluate the work.—Reuters