This is a story about human cloning.

Okay, so the title sounds like it's straight from one of those trashy little tabloids you find next to the TV Guide and the Wrigley's Spearmint at the check-out stand. But there's a connection, and that's the scary part.

Some of the folks who want to clone human beings have about as much credibility as scientists as those supermarket rags have as newspapers. Unfortunately, much of the mainstream media is allowing these "experts" to pass themselves off as the creme de la creme of cutting-edge research.

Recently, three cloning promoters appeared before the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., in an attempt to cloak their way-out ideas with an aura of academic respectability. And most of the major news outlets dutifully gobbled the bait without fully exploring the trio and their backgrounds.

Too bad. The truth is out there. And that story is much more interesting.

Panayiotis Michael Zavos holds a Ph.D. in reproductive physiology and runs an infertility technology company. He brags about holding an honorary professorship at the China Academy of Science (a credential that should raise pro-life eyebrows everywhere). His infertility clinic's web site goes into graphic detail on how a man's contribution to the test tube baby effort may be obtained. That's enough about that.

Zavos and his partners say they will clone a human being within the next year-an announcement the Catholic Church greeted with extreme dismay. Bishop Elio Sgreccia of the Pontifical Academy for Life told Reuters news service, "Those who made the atom bomb went ahead in spite of knowing about its terrible destruction. But this doesn't mean that it was the best choice for humanity."

The second member of the clone squad has also had run-ins with the Vatican. Severino Antinori was roundly chastised when his Italian in vitro fertilization clinic turned a 63-year-old woman into the mother of a newborn baby. As cloning plans surfaced, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger told Italian media that "copying children ... is Nazi madness," and that Antinori's efforts would help fulfil Hitler's evil plan for creating a superior race.

Antinori reacted angrily to this public rebuke from the Vatican's doctrinal point man, even calling Pope John Paul a "criminal" who was out to trample scientific advances and "return to the Dark Ages."

Many respectable scientists agree with the Vatican. The famous sheep-cloning experiments turned out hundreds of failures before Dolly rolled off the biotech assembly line, and there have been hints that Dolly isn't the perfect beast her manufacturers claim to have built. Based on this research with animals, scientists fear human cloning could result in the creation of horribly malformed beings. To that cautionary note, Antinori could only sniff, "these veterinary, these biologists have no experience in reproductive medicine. In humans, it's different."

"Different" would be a mild way to describe the final member of the cloning triumvirate. Dr. Brigitte Boisselier directs an outfit called Clonaid, Inc. She is also a bishop in a cult that believes earthlings are descendants of an extremely advanced extraterrestrial race.

The real scientists at the National Academy may have laughed Boisselier and her colleagues out of the hall, but all three received media exposure hailing them as exciting researchers who were about to boldly go where no man has gone before.

However, according to the Raelian cult that Boisselier promotes, man has gone there before. The Clonaid web site (www.clonaid.com) claims life on earth was created by aliens called Elohim-a word the Raelians say was mistranslated as "God" in Hebrew scripture. According to this re-telling of Creation, it was the aliens who whipped up the seas and the dry land, the beasts of the land, sea and sky, and all the other wonders the Book of Genesis credits to God.

And, oh yes. Those aliens first demonstrated human cloning techniques during a return visit about 2,000 years ago. You know the event Christians refer to as the Resurrection of Christ? The Raelians say it was not Jesus who rose from the dead, but His clone who returned to walk among the disciples. (A clone would not have had Christ's wounds, but Rael doesn't address that little discrepancy.)

In his youth, cult founder Rael-his real name is Claude Vorilhon-was a European race car driver. Now, according to his web site, it's his mission "to enable mankind to reach eternal life." Celebrate Life would have many questions for Rael, but unfortunately he'll only speak publicly for a fee-$100,000. Needless to say, no interview was conducted.

Boisselier, Rael's cloning director, joined the cult in 1993. To most of the diversity-embracing media, her legitimate academic degrees automatically negated any need to question her credibility. But following her National Academy of Sciences appearance, several journalists began digging.

For starters, these reporters uncovered her laboratory-no, not in California's Silicon Valley, nor in North Carolina's Research Triangle, but in the tiny town of Nitro, West Virginia. And by reporters' accounts, it wasn't even as high-tech as a tenth grade biology lab. The space, in a building described as a rundown former high school, rented for around $350 a month.

Two reporters from West Virginia's Charleston Gazette learned a former state legislator, Mark Hunt, had paid Boisselier $500,000 to create a clone of his son, who died after heart surgery at the age of ten months. But after becoming disenchanted with Boisselier's new role as "press hog," Hunt pulled the plug on the project.

On internet journalist Matt Drudge's Drudge Report site, freelancer Joe Lauria reported a grand jury is now looking into Boisselier, her lab, her cloning activities and her fundraising efforts. Boisselier, who lives in Las Vegas, told Lauria she's pondering a lawsuit against the FDA, challenging the federal agency's authority to ban human cloning.

But none of this deters Rael, who says, "the next step ... will be to directly clone an adult person. Then, we wake up after death in a brand new body just like after a good night sleep!" Rael says the Elohim revealed all this to him during an educational process that began 28 years ago in France, when he took his first spin in a UFO.

That covers everything mentioned in the title of this article except Elvis. No problem. Your attention is directed to www.geocities.com/Vienna/1673/ - the official web site of Americans for Cloning Elvis. So Elvis has left the building? Maybe not!

As a techno-pop version of "Don't Be Cruel" fills your computer's speakers, you'll be invited to join a petition drive: "We the undersigned, in our enduring love for Elvis, implore all those involved in cloning to hear our plea. One cell would allow future generations to witness his presence. The technology is here, and this petition is a testament to our will."

Just in case the King of Rock 'n' Roll never really left, however, there's also a link to a page of Elvis sightings.

David Brandao is American Life League's communications director.