WASHINGTON (CP) - Among the bookish biochemists and medical ethicists appearing before a congressional panel on cloning, there was no mistaking the founder of Clonaid.
He was the one wearing the snow-white pantsuit with padded shoulders, matching leather lace-ups and his hair pulled back and up from his balding pate like a follicle geyser.
Rael, founder of the Quebec-based Raelian Movement, was given all the respect due a mad scientist Wednesday when he appeared before a subcommittee that seems bent on banning human cloning.
The leader of the Raelians cheerfully insisted he was ready to clone a human being within months and prepared to go to the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent any legislative attempt to block him.
While any challenge is being fought, Rael said, there are 100 female Raelians ready to carry cloned embryos.
''They say we're a cult. But we're not a religion. Our god is science,'' Rael said before testifying.
The parents of a 10-month-old infant who died during a routine operation are first in line for the Raelians' cloning experiments. But Rael said the ultimate goal was to allow adults to clone themselves shortly before their deaths.
''We would transfer, or download, or upload, your personality and your soul into this new being,'' he said.
Rael, who once was a French race car driver known as Claude Vorilhon, claims he was apprehended by extra-terrestrials on a rural French road and told he was a clone of the supreme extra-terrestrial being.
He said he was released by the aliens with the mission to lead a technological revolution around the world.
Along the way, encouraging free love became part of the plan.
Americans may denigrate the Raelians as a flaky cult but they take their financing of a cloning project very seriously.
Clonaid, and its scientific chief, Dr. Brigitte Boisselier, have received respectful if not fretful coverage in the New York Times, Wired magazine and the CBS program 60 Minutes.
The Raelians got a somewhat cooler reception during Wednesday's hearings.
''No reputable scientist other than cults, cranks, kooks and capitalists believe that science is ready for human cloning,'' said Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.
Canadians, who are used to reading either mirthful or dismissive accounts of the Raelians' Canadian adventures, might wonder why the group's leader was afforded the honour of appearing before a congressional subcommittee.
But Congressman Billy Tauzin, who chairs the powerful Energy Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, said there was an urgent need to hear from the Raelians.
''If the Raelians are to be believed, they are only weeks away from implanting a human embryo in a surrogate mother,'' Tauzin said.
''Through this hearing, the public will hopefully learn whether the Raelian experiment is a hoax, or whether as Time magazine reported, this group may be further along in human cloning than the competition.''
Despite the skepticism, Rael seemed delighted to have alighted at such a prominent perch in the halls of terrestrial power.
''I'm very happy we are discussing all of this. There's freedom here that you don't have in other countries.''
Asked about the skepticism, he said: ''There has always been skepticism of leading scientists. Look at Columbus, look at Galileo. The first vaccines were condemned, the first planes crashed.''
The Raelians claim to have a medical team working towards cloning a human being at an undisclosed location in the United States.
Several U.S. states have outlawed human cloning and Tauzin said he stood ready to introduce legislation to ban it across the country.
Clonaid, which Rael says is not directly tied to his movement, refuses to say where the experiments are taking place and who is conducting them.