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"I do believe we've been created by scientists," she said. "And I'm grateful to them for my life."
She said neither the infertile couple nor the four other couples are Raelians. The other couples are a pair of lesbians from Northern Europe; two couples from North America and Asia who seek to clone dead children from cells taken before their deaths; and a second Asian couple, she said.
So far, 10 women have been implanted with Clonaid-created cloned embryos; five had miscarriages in the first three weeks, and the other five led to "Eve" and the four current pregnancies, Boisselier said.
No couple has paid for the cloning effort, but some of the first five couples invested in Clonaid, she said. She said she does not know how much Clonaid will charge once it begins to offer the service commercially.
To gain convincing proof that "Eve" is a clone, Boisselier said she accepted an offer by former ABC News science editor Michael Guillen. Guillen, now a free-lance journalist who said he has no connection to Clonaid, said he has chosen "world-class, independent experts" whom he did not identify to draw DNA from the mother and the newborn and test them for a match.
To do the cloning that led to "Eve," scientists removed the nucleus from an egg of the woman and merged the altered egg with a skin cell from her, Boisselier said. The DNA from the mother's skin cell took over direction of the egg.
"The baby is very healthy," Boisselier said. "The parents are happy. I hope that you remember them when you talk about this baby -- not like a monster, like some results of something that is disgusting."
The notion of human cloning is controversial, both because of the apparent risk to a baby -- cloned animals have shown a host of abnormalities -- and because of other ethical considerations.
Boisselier contends that defects seen in cloned animals will not necessarily appear in humans.
"If my science is giving babies to parents who have been dying to get one with their own genes, is my science worse than the one preparing bombs to kill people?" she asked. "I am creating life."
Several countries, including Britain, Israel, Japan and Germany, have banned human cloning. Legislation in Congress stalled last summer over cloning for medical research purposes.
"The president believes, like most Americans, that human cloning is deeply troubling," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "Despite the widespread skepticism among scientists and medical professionals about today's announcement, it underscores the need for the new Congress to act."
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