'Experimenting with life is all parents do', says clone cult leader

In 1975, Claude Vorilhon claimed to travel by flying saucer to have lunch with Jesus. Now his Rael cult says it has cloned the first human. How far can we believe him? He talks to NICK HARRIS in a rare interview.

Claude Vorilhon, otherwise known as Rael, gathered up his white robes and sat down at the breakfast table of the discreet, £400-a-night Mayfair hotel he made his base during his brief trip to London.

A medallion signalling membership of the Raelian cult he had formed hung around his neck. He was accompanied by an attractive, much younger woman.

"I'm not a scientist," said the one-time rally-driver turned guru. "I am a spiritual leader and what is interesting for me is the religious and philosophical aspect and I wish to put the emphasis on this by saying we are interested in human cloning."

In a rare interview, conducted during a fund-raising trip to England but never before published, he talked about selling clones to anyone who could raise the £140,000) fee, of how he might use secretive laboratories, possibly in Africa, to further his work, and of how experimenting with cloning was no more sinister than more conventional methods of reproduction.

"Any mother and father are experimenting with life," said Rael. He had agreed to the interview as he tried to raise awareness and funding for his cloning programme.

"It [cloning] is just another way of procreation ... To produce Dolly the sheep took 277 eggs and 13 mothers simultaneously pregnant. But I am not worried about the side effects [of human cloning]. There is no more danger to make a child like that than to have a mother alcoholic and a father on drugs.

"People are always afraid of what they don't know. They were afraid of electricity, the first steam train, artificial in-semination. Now they're afraid of cloning and slowly people will start to understand what are the advantages and how much it will help science to reach new levels, and it's no more controversial than having a twin brother or sister. You just have the twin sister or brother later."

Yesterday, Clonaid, a company affiliated to the Raelians - the cult formed by Mr Vorilhon after he claimed to have met aliens and been taken to their planet in the mid-1970s - said it had produced the first human clone. Raelians believe that humankind started with the cloning of aliens 25,000 years ago. They are advocates of free love (condoms mandatory) and also believe that a super-being called Elohim will return to earth in 2025 to liberate believers.

Brigitte Boisselier, the French chemist who heads Clonaid and describes Rael as her spiritual leader, said the cloned girl had been born by Caesarean section to a 31-year-old American. The country of birth was withheld. The baby, Ms Boisselier added, had weighed 7lb at birth and was "healthy and normal". Clonaid has yet to provide any evidence of its claims although Ms Boisselier predicted that imminent DNA tests will silence doubters.

She added that four other women were about to give birth to cloned babies, including a European woman. If the claims turn out to be true, they will confirm the chilling prophesies of Rael, who had long said it was "technically easy" to clone humans. He has claimed for years to have a team of unidentified specialists, including geneticists, working for him.

Speaking before any confirmation that Clonaid had actually started implanting cloned embryos into aspirant mothers, Rael added: "If we do it, we will not make the mistake of announcing where we made it. I will not say the real name of the country, but for example, we could go to Rwanda in Africa and create a research centre on child diseases and nobody would know what is happening inside. And then you have secret scientists working in a secret location and when the child is born we go on TV with a beautiful mother and a beautiful child and everybody will say that cloning is wonderful. That is our goal."

Rael added at the time that he had hoped to work with Dr Richard Seed, an American scientist who has long advocated human cloning. There is no evidence or suggestion that Dr Seed was involved in any way in the events that led to Friday's announcement, although Dr Seed said in 1999 that he believed various groups were working on human cloning even then.

Dr Seed, when contacted yesterday by The Independent on Sunday at his home in the US, distanced himself from the project but added: "Having discussed some of the issues and offered some advice, I'm 98 per cent sure that they [the Raelians] are telling the truth about this cloned baby."

At the time of the interview in London, Rael said Clonaid had 40 interested customers and "around four or five people interested in investing". Producing the alleged clone born last week has reportedly cost around £1.5m so far. The source of funding is unconfirmed, although the Raelian movement has around 60,000 members worldwide.

Ms Boisselier said 10 women had been implanted with embryos and five had had miscarriages. "Nobody has paid me for anything so far," she said. "Maybe that will change. We will offer a service and we will be asking for money."

Rael had been more candid in his interview, saying the price of a clone, "when we get started", would be US$200,000 a time. "We have knowledge; we have the science; we have the customers; we need the money. We're just trying to put together customers and organisers. It depends on the investors, the money we have."

Rael, who once claimed that he travelled by flying saucer in 1975 to share lunch with Jesus, Buddha and Confucius, has made no public statement since Friday. Fear of ridicule is not thought to be behind his silence, which he rarely breaks.

- INDEPENDENT

Herald feature: Cloning