THE row over the ethics of cloning was fuelled further yesterday by claims that South Korean researchers are just weeks away from ''giving birth'' to a scientific reproduction of a human being.
The claims which, if true, would make the worst fears of the practice's opponents a reality have prompted a furious reaction not only from the Church of Scotland, but also from Scottish scientists.
The Roslin Institute, the research establishment which pioneered the cloning of Dolly the sheep in 1996, moved quickly to distance itself from the work description in Korea, and criticised the decision to announce the ''breakthrough''.
Dr Patrick Dixon, a genetics expert whose recent book Futurewise deals with the cloning debate, also called for a global ban on human cloning, a move backed by the the Church of Scotland, although the Kirk's Dr Donald Bruce warned that enforcing a worldwide ban would be ''all but impossible''.
The researchers at the infertility clinic of Kyunghee University Hospital in Seoul said they had cultivated a human embryo in its early stages using an unfertilised egg and a somatic cell - those that make up most of the body - donated by a woman in her 30s.
''If implanted into a uterine wall of a carrier, we can assume that a human child would be formed and that it would have the same gene characteristics as that of the donor,'' said Dr Lee Bo-yon, who headed the research. Dr Lee's team first removed the genetic nucleus of an egg donated by a woman, and then used a needle to fill the empty egg with the nucleus of one of her body cells.
It then cultivated the egg until it grew into a four-nucleus cell, a step before developing into a human cell.
His team stopped there because a resolution adopted by South Korean scientists in 1993 bans taking the experiment any further.
The next step would have been to implant the egg into a woman's womb and let it grow into stem cells - primordial cells from which all of a human's bodily tissues and organs develop.
Dr Lee added: ''Our experiment marked the first time that the more reliable cloning technology has been applied to human cells and might make human cloning more feasible.''
However, Dr Harry Griffin, assistant director of the Roslin Institute, said: ''We do not believe the Korean group has sufficient scientific evidence to back their claim of having cloned a human embryo.
''Their experiment was stopped when the embryo was seen dividing into four cells.
''By stopping the experiment when they did, the Korean researchers are unable to provide any evidence that the transferred nucleus had been successfully reprogrammed.''
Dr Dixon called for an immediate moratorium on all human cloning research, adding: ''Scientists have told us that human cloning was some distance away and for that reason there was no great urgency to introduce a global ban on the birth of human clones. However, it seems to me that the first birth of human clones is only weeks away.''
Dr Bruce said: ''The Church of Scotland has called for an international ban on cloning human beings. The time has come for international discussion, although how we would enforce a worldwide ban would be one question that would be very difficult to answer.''
The Council of Europe's bioethics convention now includes protocol banning human cloning, but that is restricted to member states.
The council has a similar policy to the International Bioethics Committee of Unesco - the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural organisation - but it also includes member states only.
Following the announcement by the South Korean scientists, about two dozen religious and civic activists held a rally in front of Kyunghee Hospital shouting for discontinuation of the ''inhuman research''. One protest sign read: ''Who am I? I don't want to be a cloned human being''.
The announcement comes as South Korea's Parliament is pushing legislation banning cloning of human cells except for research on cancer or other diseases.
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