THE HAGUE, January 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A second human clone will be born this weekend in the Netherlands, a member of the Raelian cult said Saturday, January 4, as a top Russian scientist charged that efforts to clone humans will produce a “monster 99 percent of the time”.

“The second baby clone will be born this weekend in the Netherlands,” Bart Overvliet, president of the Dutch chapter of the Raelians, who believe that the human race was founded by extra-terrestrials, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Overvliet refused to give any further details on the place, date and conditions of the expected birth, saying only that the baby would be a girl cloned from the woman who was due to bear her, who was “a lesbian of Dutch nationality.”

His statement confirmed a Belgian television report a day earlier, in which another senior Raelian cult member, Brigitte Boisselier, said a baby girl would be born to a lesbian couple “in a country not far from here.”

The announcement came only days after the group claimed to have created the first-ever carbon copy of a human.

Boiselier is a former French chemist who heads Clonaid, a Raelian-owned company based in Las Vegas that announced on December 27 that a baby, also a clone of the woman who bore her, had been born the previous day at a hospital outside the United States.

Clonaid has refused to provide proof of its assertions. Its announcement attracted worldwide publicity and has left the scientific community skeptical.

99% Monster

Meanwhile, the head of Russia’s Molecular Genetics Institute, Vyacheslav Tarantul, responding to the announcement of the first birth of a human clone, warned Saturday that nearly all cloning efforts have led to horrific biological deformations.

“It is theoretically possible to clone a human being, but who will take responsibility if a monster is born? This risk exists in 99 percent of the cases,” ITAR-TASS reported him as saying.

“During cloning experiments on animals, we have found anomalies in most cases - cancer, in particular,” Tarantul added.

Tarantul denounced the lack of any concrete evidence provided to back the Raelian’s history-making claims.

“It only takes three or four days to make a comparative DNA analysis of the mother and child in order to see whether this is the case of the first clone, or a publicity stunt,” he said.

Waiting for Evidence to Sue

Cloning is banned in the Netherlands under a law that went into effect September 1, with violators facing up to one year in prison.

The Dutch justice minister has said that before taking any legal action, he will want to verify that a baby is indeed a clone and that it was born on Dutch soil.

Islam & Cloning

The permissibility of the experiment in Islam sparked different viewpoints from prominent Muslim scholars.

Al-Azhar, the highest religious reference in the Sunni world, issued a fatwa ruling that human cloning is Haram (prohibited) and must be stopped.

On the same line, prominent Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi asserted that “viewed from the Islamic general objectives, rulings, and texts, human cloning is completely prohibited.”

However, Lebanon’s top Shiite scholar Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah endorsed a different viewpoint, allowing human cloning if its positive aspects overweight negative ones.

He stressed, however, that it is prohibited to use the organs of a cloned baby as “spare parts” in organs transplant operation.

In an interview with Tehran Radio on Tuesday, December 31, Fadlallah argued that cloning does not contradict with the question of creation or turns man into a creator.

“Those who recently carried out the cloning operation were guided by the divine law in pollination and delivery,” he said.

“They did not get the elements of their experiment from nowhere and therefore cloning is not about a new law of creation but rather being guided by the divine law,” added the Shiite scholar.

“Cloning is a great scientific event which indicates man’s genius in discovering the laws and systems created by Allah and his attempt to capitalize on them in his practical and scientific experiments,” he said.

Raelians Hit Back at Critics

For her part, the maverick French scientist leading the Raelian cult’s drive to clone babies has defended her attempts to create carbon copies of humans.

Brigitte Boisselier, in remarks published in Saturday’s edition of Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique, defended the controversial experiment and even lashed out at critics.

The president of Clonaid also told La Libre Belgique that she hoped soon to provide public proof establishing the first baby, born last month, as a clone, but said it was up to the parents of “Eve”.

Raelian leader Claude Vorilhon, meanwhile, said he asked Boisselier to stop DNA tests on Eve, insisting he would refuse to heed a Florida court’s order to appear on January 22 with other principals in the matter of the cloned birth.

Last week, Boisselier announced that her Las Vegas-based organisation Clonaid had overseen the birth on December 26 of a girl cloned from a 31-year-old U.S. citizen at a hospital outside the United States.

That announcement has yet to be confirmed independently and left the scientific community skeptical.

Boisselier is a senior member of the Raelians, who believe the human race was started by aliens who landed on Earth 25,000 years ago and cloned the first person.

Speaking during a visit to Brussels Friday, the former chemist told the Belgian newspaper that the Florida hearing to determine if Eve should be placed under court protection was “monstrous”.

Boisselier denied that cloning babies was equally objectionable. “As soon as people see the face of the child and understand that it is merely a twin, brought forward, of another child, I’m convinced that their doubts will disappear and their view of this event will settle down,” she said.

Five out of 10 clone embryos implanted by Clonaid into mothers-to-be were due to be born, Boisselier reiterated, while denying that cloning presented heightened risks of genetic problems and serious illnesses.

The risk was “the same for every child born on the same day at the same time”, she said. “That has nothing to do with the method of conception.”

Boisselier acknowledged scientific skepticism about the purported birth of the first clone, which she announced at a press conference without furnishing any proof.

“I’m also impatiently waiting for the proof,” she told La Libre Belgique.

“But it is the parents who are keeping back access and as long as there is a doubt that the baby could be taken away from them, I’ll have to stay patient for a while longer.”

Vorilhon told CNN Friday that in light of the court order in Florida, he had asked Boisselier to halt DNA tests on Eve.