BRITAIN: The British head of the Raelian sect, which claims to have produced the world's first human clones, has denied the announcement was an elaborate hoax.
Michael Guillen, a freelance journalist who said he would oversee DNA testing to prove whether a clone had been produced, has suspended his efforts, but Mr Glen Carter said the journalist had stopped his work because people had accused him of being a "lunatic".
Mr Carter is the British president of the Raelian movement, which founded Clonaid. The Raelians believe space aliens created life on Earth. Yesterday he said the sect wanted to get the babies tested as soon as possible to "get the show on the road".
Mr Guillen, a former science editor for US network ABC, was investigating the claims made by the sect's research company Clonaid that a baby girl named Eve born last month was a clone. A second clone was said to have been born last week to a Dutch lesbian couple and Clonaid claims three more will be born by the end of this month.
Mr Carter told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I understand his claims and I understand what he said but it's important to be aware that he's faced a character assassination for the last couple of weeks or so in the US and beginning here, where he's been called an idiot, a lunatic, somebody who is not independent. I think he's just showing his independence.
"It is true that until there is any evidence," Mr Carter continued, "then there is always the possibility it's a hoax. I just don't believe that it is a hoax.
"If you want to compromise the safety of the family, then yes, you could end the situation in a second, but nobody at Clonaid from my understanding is prepared to split up a family simply to save their own faces, I think that would be hugely selfish. Just because no one sees the truth does not mean it's an error, as Gandhi said."
Mr Carter said when the truth came out and evidence was put forward, "all this frustration will just be seen as exactly as I see it which is childish arrogance and vanity that scientists want to know now, because they're all frightened that they don't get their grants from their governments to do the same thing".
Mr Carter said he believed the second child, also a girl, would be the first to be tested.
The testing has been blocked by the American parents of the first baby, according to Clonaid.
In a statement, Mr Guillen said he had assembled experts to do the work but suspended the effort last night. "The team of scientists has had no access to the alleged family and, therefore, cannot verify first-hand the claim that a human baby has been cloned.
Experts said they were not surprised at Mr Guillen's statement because Clonaid never had any credibility with the scientific community. "We have been ignoring it because we do not view it as a scientifically valid statement," said Ms Natalie Dewitt of Nature, the British science journal which published the milestone data on Dolly the cloned sheep in 1997. - (PA)