Cloned babies 'within a year or two', claims fertility doctor

While the transfers have not led to a viable pregnancy American doctor Panayiotis Zavos said he had successfully transferred 11 out of 14 cloned embryos.

Dr Zavos said this was a serious attempt at producing a cloned baby, and added: ‘There is absolutely no way that it will not happen. If we intensify our efforts we can have a cloned baby within a year or two, but I don’t know whether we can intensify our efforts to that extent.’

The work was thought to have been carried out in a laboratory in the Middle East, as it is illegal in many countries, including Britain, to transfer cloned embryos into the human womb.

The three married women and a single women who took part in the bid to give birth to a cloned baby came from Britain, the United States and a country in the Middle East.

Dr Zavos also claimed that in January 2004 he successfully implanted a cloned embryo into a 35-year-old woman although a month later the woman had not become pregnant and the procedure had not worked.

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