ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 10, 1997 TAG: 9703100076
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LONDON
A Belgian scientist on Sunday denied a London newspaper report that his fertility center accidentally produced the world's first human clone, a 4-year-old boy now living in southern Belgium.
Dr. Robert Schoysman, head of the Van Helmont Hospital near Brussels, said he was ``amazed and irritated'' by The Sunday Times of London report.
He said the child was born after his mother underwent in vitro fertilization, in which sperm is combined in a laboratory with an egg surgically taken from a woman, and the resulting fertilized egg is implanted in a woman's womb. In this case, the fertilized egg split into two embryos, creating twins.
The Sunday Times quoted a biologist at the Van Helmont hospital as saying the scientists accidentally cloned the child when they rubbed a glass rod over the surface of a frozen fertilized egg.
-ASSOCIATED PRESS
LENGTH: Short : 28 linesby CNB