SOUTH AFRICAN DOCTOR READY TO CLONE HUMANS

February 15, 1998

Johannesburg (AFP-Jiji) -- A South African doctor and his team are ready to clone humans and have applied to a local university's ethics committee for permission to go ahead with the procedure, reports here said Saturday.

Four South African women desperate to have children were willing to allow Mohammed Cassim to attemp to create replicas of themselves or their husbands, the Saturday Star reported.

The report said expertise and equipment to replicaae genetic material and create human clones was available at a Johannesburg fertility clinic.

Cassim is in partnership with a Danish fertility clinic and has received financial aid for his work in in-vitro reproduction -- but not for cloning.