Court summons parents of cloned Eve

The unknown "parents" of the purportedly cloned baby known as "Eve," and the principals involved in her birth, have been summoned to appear before a Florida court to determine if she should be placed under court protection, the plaintiff-lawyer said Thursday.

"The clerk of the court of Broward County, Juvenile Division, has set a hearing for an arraignment scheduled on January 22," attorney Bernard Siegel of Miami told AFP by telephone.

The seat of Broward County is Fort Lauderdale, north of Miami. "The legal custodian -- the parents -- are required to be there, as well as the respondents, Clonaid and Rael," he said.

"Failure to appear amounts to giving consent of an adjudication of the child to a guardian. They have to appear."

Rael, or the Raelians, is a sect which believes the human race was started by aliens who landed on Earth 25,000 years ago and cloned the first human.

Clonaid is a Las Vegas-based organisation which arranged, and publicised, the first purportedly cloned birth, the location of which it has kept secret and for which it has yet to offer scientific proof.

Last week Brigitte Boisselier, formerly a French chemist and now president of Clonaid, announced that a baby girl cloned from her 31-year-old US mother was born on December 26 by Caesarean section at a hospital outside the United States.

Boisselier, as well as being president of Clonaid, is a senior member of the Raelians, who believe cloning is the key to humanity's survival. Siegel told AFP earlier Thursday that he had petitioned the court, in his own capacity as plaintiff, to place "Eve" under the court's protection.

"I was concerned that, if this (the clonage) is true, this child is an abused child, that it could have some serious genetic, fatal problems and that the child was being exploited by Clonaid," he said.