Dr. Panos Zavos

Panos Zavos.Photo: Reuters

Doctors, politicians and religious and pressure groups have denounced an announcement by a US doctor that he has beaten the world to implant a cloned human embryo in a woman's womb - and wants more volunteers to join her.

Panos Zavos gave no evidence for his claim, but told a news conference in London he would allow independent DNA testing if the pregnancy was confirmed in the next few weeks.

He said the embryo had come from the immature egg of an infertile 35-year-old woman and a skin cell from her husband.He would not say where the operation was performed, other than that it was not the US, Britain or Europe, nor when, although it was a "very recent event".There was a 30 per cent chance it would produce the world's first verified clone, he said.

The British Government criticised Dr Zavos's announcement and noted the practice was illegal in Britain.The Vatican also denounced the move, while Wolff Reik, a cloning expert at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, said: "My dim view is this man is exploiting the emotional pressures of parents desperate to have children.">

Experts say it is scientifically possible for cloning to happen in humans, as it already has in several mammalian species.One described Dr Zavos as a capable and "relatively credible" scientist.