A Quebec-based cult that believes space aliens created Earthlings in a lab 25,000 years ago says it has produced the world's first human clone to be born within two weeks, possibly on Christmas Day.

The Raelians, a free-love fringe sect that runs the theme park UFOland in Quebec's Eastern Townships, have offered no way to verify the claim or validate that this highly controversial experiment is under way.

But an official with Clonaid, the cloning company the Raelians founded in 1997, told CTV News that the clone is a girl and a genetic replica of a U.S. woman in her 30s who is unable to have children with her husband naturally.

The woman is said to be pregnant with a clone of herself, and is nearly ready to deliver by cesarean section.

Brigitte Boisselier, chief scientist at Clonaid and a Raelian bishop, confirmed that the private biotech firm is "planning a C-section." Speaking in a recent telephone interview with CTV News, she said it "would be nice" if the procedure could be performed on Christmas Day.

She said the cloned baby was created by taking genetic material from the woman and inserting it into a hollowed-out human egg donated by a Raelian woman. The refilled egg was implanted into the uterus of the woman being cloned.

The Clonaid claim is the second in as many months that the first human clone is about to be born. Italian fertility doctor Severino Antinori, famous for helping a 62-year-old carry a child in 1994, said in November that a woman is expected to give birth in January to a cloned boy. U.S. embryologist Panos Zavos has said he soon will have the clones of infertile couples in the making.

None of the groups racing to produce a human clone has provided scientific data as proof of their efforts.

This is not the Raelians' first publicized attempt: Last year, they said they were cloning a couple's dead infant.

But Clonaid said that this time it is prepared to have its results reviewed by an outside party.

Clonaid says a U.S. film company has the rights to capture the events of the next two weeks. This, Dr. Boisselier told CTV, could include blood tests comparing the DNA of mother and baby "right after birth" to confirm whether the offspring is a clone.

Dr. Boisselier was unavailable for an interview yesterday.

Without independent scientific corroboration, medical researchers are bound to remain skeptical about the Raelians' cloning claims. The sect, started by a Frenchman who claims to be Christ's half-brother, is said to run its cloning experiments out of a U.S. lab that the public has never been seen.

"I'm highly suspicious that this has actually taken place," said Arthur Leader, chief of reproductive medicine at the Ottawa Hospital. "My first reaction is that this is a hoax that demeans the plight of the infertile."

Dr. Leader, who is also a professor of obstetrics and gynecology with the University of Ottawa, said that ethically, most countries have agreed that the idea is abhorrent. More than a dozen have banned human cloning for reproductive purposes, and Canada has legislation pending that would do the same.

"It's like saying that photocopies of people can be equal to people," Dr. Leader said. "It's very sad that some people have a distorted value system that demeans the uniqueness of human life."

Aside from the moral issues that cloning raises, most scientists have scoffed at efforts to clone humans, saying the technology is not advanced enough to make the attempt. Researchers have found that few animal-clone embryos survive, and those that do often are plagued with serious medical problems: deformity, respiratory woes, obesity, psychological problems and premature aging.

"Knowing there is this high risk of miscarriages, stillbirths and harm, it's irresponsible that they try to do this with women," said Patricia Baird, the University of British Columbia geneticist who in 1993 headed Canada's Royal Commission on Reproductive Technologies.

Dr. Boisselier, who testified on the merits of cloning before the U.S. Congress in March, 2001, said that five of 10 human-embryo clones they implanted in women miscarried. But she told CTV that a few human clones likely will be born in February and that Clonaid intends to implant 20 more in January.

Dr. Baird said she is inclined not to give much weight to the Raelians' claims: "They don't have any reputable scientists or physicians working with them, and they are such a fringe group in terms of their beliefs that it's hard to see any reputable scientist working with them."

However, Dr. Baird said that mammals have been cloned, though not well, and it's certainly possible to clone a human, though definitely not easy.

Last year, Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology Inc. reported amid wide condemnation that it had tried to clone a human embryo. The biotech company argued that it had not intended to clone an embryo to make a baby but to collect stem cells from a days-old embryo clone that could provide perfect tissue matches for the person who was cloned, a process known as therapeutic cloning.

After implanting genetic material from an adult woman's cell into hollowed-out donor eggs and chemically jump-starting fertilization, the odds of success were dismal. From 71 eggs, Dr. Baird noted, only one divided, and underwent only six divisions before dying.

But if the Raelians can draw upon the eggs and surrogate wombs of Raelian women -- as its leader, Rael, has claimed, then Dr. Baird said they may stand a chance of bringing at least one pregnancy to term.

Crafting a clone

The Quebec-based Raelian religious group claims to have cloned a human using the following process:
1. A cell containing DNA is removed from an infertile woman.
2. An unfertilized egg is removed from a (Raelian) donor. Its nucleus, containing the DNA, is removed.
3. The cell DNA and unfertilized egg are fused.
4. It is not known how cell division in the egg was stimulated. (In animal cloning, eggs have been exposed to a mixture of chemicals and growth factors to activate division). The egg would then be transferred into the infertile woman.