CLONING: A week after announcing that it had produced the first human clone, with legal and scientific opposition mounting, the controversial Raelian sect has delayed tests to back its claims.
The sect's guru, Mr Claude Vorilhon, a Frenchman who has given himself the name Rael, has said he ordered the sect-financed company not to allow promised DNA tests after a Florida lawyer moved to have the baby placed under court protection.
The sect has said a second cloned baby will be born in a northern European country in the next few days but is refusing to provide proof of any of its claims.
The Raelians, who believe humans were cloned from aliens who landed on Earth 25,000 years ago, have been under scrutiny since their company, Clonaid, announced on December 27th that a baby cloned from her mother was born on the previous day.
According to CNN, Mr Vorilhon asked the network to address him as "his holiness" during the interview released late on Thursday.
Mr Vorilhon said he had called the head of Clonaid, Dr Brigitte Boisselier, to ask that promised DNA tests be halted because of the legal action in Florida. The tests, to be organised by a US journalist, Michael Guillen, should have been carried out last Tuesday and the results released early next week.
"The bad news two days ago was that a judge in Florida signed a paper saying that the baby Eve should be take from the family, from her mother," Mr Vorilhon told CNN. "I called her [Dr Boisselier\] immediately because to take away this poor baby from a mother, I think this is completely crazy, just because she was cloned. So I called Dr Boisselier, and I said, 'If I was you, I would not test anything'."
A Florida lawyer, Mr Bernard Siegel, said he had asked for a court to determine if baby Eve should be placed under court protection. He said a juvenile division court in Broward County had set a hearing for January 22nd.
"The legal custodian - the parents - are required to be there, as well as the respondents, Clonaid and Rael," he said.
According to Dr Boisselier, a baby girl cloned from her 31-year-old US mother was born on December 26th by Caesarean section at a hospital outside of the United States.
Mr Siegel said he had petitioned the court, in a personal capacity, to place Eve under the court's protection. "I was concerned that, if this [the cloning\] is true, this child is an abused child, that it could have some serious genetic, fatal problems and that the child was being exploited by Clonaid," he said.
Mr Siegel's petition to name the court as guardian was lodged in Fort Lauderdale.
"The purpose of my lawsuit is to appoint a guardian for this child. Because I perceived that this child, more than any other child in the world, needs legal protection under the United States courts," Mr Siegel said. - (AFP)