Clonaid Promises Proof of Cloned Baby

Dec. 30 -- It was a dramatic scientific claim, and now it's time for proof.

A 7-pound baby purported to be the first human clone is due to arrive in the United States today and will face DNA testing as a group that sponsored the birth tries to prove to a skeptical scientific community that the child is indeed a clone.

Brigitte Boisselier, the chief executive of Clonaid, a cloning company affiliated with a religious sect that believes aliens gave rise to life on Earth, told ABCNEWS' Good Morning America that scientists will be offered all the proof they require within a week.

"The only way for me to prove this is to have an independent expert going to the place of the parents, sampling the cells of the baby and mother and comparing them with [genetic] tests that are well known," said Boisselier, who claims to have two chemistry degrees. "Then you'll have all the proof you need."

Proof, Please

Boisselier made the announcement on Friday that her group had produced the world's first cloned baby. She said the baby was delivered to a 31-year-old American woman by Caesarean section on Thursday and that a pediatrician had examined the child — nicknamed "Eve" — and found that she was in fine health.

The scientific community has responded with skepticism and dismay, citing the several failed cloning attempts of other mammals. They have also pointed out that Boisselier has offered no proof — no photographs or genetic tests — to prove her claim.

"How do you know?" Glenn McGee, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, said on Good Morning America. "Independent experts testing a baby named Eve or whatever the baby turns out to be named when she arrives in the United States, will be great if it happens, but the first test that science applies to its own work is peer review. Who is going to do the testing? And how will that be published and peer reviewed?"

At the news conference on Friday, Boisselier said that former ABCNEWS science editor Michael Guillen would select independent experts, who would then determine if the newborn girl was, in fact, an exact genetic copy.