Controversial Italian gynaecologist and embryologist, Severino Antinori, told an Italian magazine, Oggi, that he had given birth to no less than three children using his “human cloning technique.”

This is not the first claim of successful human cloning, however, if the claims are legitimate, this would mark the first successful human cloning in history.

Antinori, famous for his work with post-menopausal women in the late 90s, allowed a 63 year old woman to give birth in 1994 using controversial and experimental reproductive knowledge.

The doctor says the three children are living in eastern Europe, are in healthy and excellent shape, and are made up of 2 boys and 1 girl, all nine years old as of today. The clones were made from cells from three sterile fathers, and women’s egg cells impregnated using a method he called “nuclear transfer,” said the doctor in the interview.

As with most human cloning and genetic recoding claims, Antinori said that “respect for the families’ privacy,” does not allow him to release any further information or evidence. The doctor did not provide proof for his claims, but he did claim that the technique was “an improvement” from the Dolly the sheep incident in 1996.

The European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine does explicitly prohibit human cloning in one of it’s least ratified protocols, with only Greece, Spain and Portugal signing on.

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