US federal investigators have uncovered a secret laboratory where members of a religious sect were experimenting with human cloning, according to media reports Saturday.
A grand jury in Syracuse, New York, subpoenaed telephone records and other documents as part of an investigation into a lab run by members of the Raelian sect, which believes scientists from another planet created all life on Earth, according to a US News and World Reports article.
The Raelian chief scientist, French national Brigitte Boisselier, along with Italian gynecologist Severino Antinori and US doctor Richard Seed, lead an international consortium that has announced plans to clone a human being.
Clonaid, a company with links to the Raelians, seeks to reproduce by cloning a 10-month-old baby that died during heart surgery, at the request of the baby's US parents.
"I haven't done anything that is illegal and I will never do," Boisselier, a "bishop" of the sect said.
She said she was prepared to carry on her experiments outside the United States.
The US Food and Drug Administration warned her in a hand-delivered letter in late March that the lab may have been violating FDA regulations, after Boisselier claimed that her facility was mere weeks away from being ready to clone a human being, US News wrote.