Prof Severino Antinori said hundreds of couples have already agreed to take part in his experiment.

These two scientists claim they’re about to do something that many believe is both dangerous and wrong.

“The genie is out of the bottle.”

Something so extraordinary that it could alter the very evolution of our species.

“We don’t need any permission from anybody.”

They say that next month in a secret laboratory they will try to clone a human being.

“We’ll be careful.”

But in the last few months, new research has revealed hidden dangers so terrifying that most scientists now believe human cloning would be disastrous. So is science really ready to clone a human?

Cloning will be a completely new way of making a human being. Instead of the combination of father’s sperm and mother’s egg that makes each of us unique, cloning will create a baby from a single cell from a single person. The clone will be an identical genetic copy.

Whatever its opponents say there are people who will try the new technology. For infertile couples who cannot make babies with sperm and eggs, cloning is a medical breakthrough that could give them children of their own.

What Dr. Zavos and his colleagues are proposing has so far only ever been done in animals. They will take an egg from a woman and remove its nucleus, the part which contains her DNA. They will be left with a hollow egg. Next they will take a cell from the body of the adult who is to be cloned. It’s from this cell that they will make a new human being, an identical genetic copy.

Once they have selected the cell scientists will take its DNA and insert it into the empty egg. Then they will have to stimulate the egg to begin to grow. They might use an electric shock and add chemicals, the methods used in animals. No one understands how or why, but this process should switch the adult cell back to become the very first cell of life. The new embryo will be grown in a dish for a few days, then implanted into a woman’s womb where it might grow into a human being. This human would be a clone.

For now, mainstream science, politicians and public opinion believe that cloning humans would be courting disaster.

“...the reason why you should not be cloning is because it’s dangerous, because it’s unnecessary and because actually it is damaging our respect for human life and the dignity of human beings and you should be ashamed of what you are doing.”

But the momentum towards cloning may be unstoppable.

“We either do it right, ladies and gentlemen, or we don’t do it and those incidentally that wish to ban this technology, and I said this to the US Congress and I will say that to you tonight, they are not going to be the Neil Armstrongs that would fly, that would fly us to the moon and walk us on it, therefore we need to be courageous, we need to move forward and we need to develop this technology in a safe, responsible fashion and I think it is the right thing to do and we intend to do that. Thank you.”