Scientists from the United States and Italy said today they planned to create the first cloned human beings, despite religious outrage and opposition from many scientists.
American Mr Panayiotis Zavos and Italian Mr Severino Antinori, who has already gained notoriety by helping a 62-year-old woman give birth, said they wanted to clone babies to help infertile couples have children.
"Cloning may be considered as the last frontier to overcome male sterility and give the possibility to infertile males to pass on their genetic pattern", Mr Antinori told a packed auditorium of scientists and journalists.
"Some people say we are going to clone the world, but this isn't true... I'm asking all of us in the scientific community to be prudent and calm", he said.
"We're talking science, we're not here to create a fuss."
Mr Antinori and Mr Zavos, a reproductive scientist based in Kentucky who runs companies working on genetics and cloning, say 10 infertile couples have volunteered to participate in the experiment to produce cloned infants.
The plan has come under heavy fire from mainstream scientists and religious groups, with the Vatican describing their proposals as grotesque.
Bishop Elio Sgreccia, head of the John Paul II Institute for Bioethics at Rome's Gemelli hospital, said human cloning raised profoundly disturbing ethical issues.