IT USED TO BE that the sparks would fly and one thing would lead to another and that's how you made babies.

Then science got in on the act, with in-vitro fertilization and surrogate mothers and the rest, and, although that drained some of the va-va-voom out of it, the world's surely a better place as a result.

But cloning? Not now, thanks. We think we feel a headache coming on.

It just figures, doesn't it, that while the American medical and scientific establishment was pausing to work out the ethics and limitations of human cloning research, a bunch of cultists who believe we're all descended from aliens would come along and announce they've already done the deed. Last week, a company called Clonaid, founded by members of the Raelian religion, said a woman had given birth to her own clone, and that more clone babies are due soon.

Here's the unfortunate essence of it:

Human cloning is possible, at least in theory, and soon enough undoubtedly in reality. Look Dolly the sheep in her woolly face and say it can't be done. Right now, the mainstream institutions won't touch it. That leaves the niches of the world, which are always going to be there, and entrepreneurs of varying degrees of scambidextrousness, who are also always with us.

It's scary to think of cultists who revere a guy living in Canada, of all places, actually churning out an army of human replicas. And who knows? Maybe they're telling the truth. The point is, if not them, someone, someday will create a human with precisely one parent.

Problems? Like you wouldn't believe. For starters, even lower-order animal cloning doesn't work too well. It takes a lot of tries before you get a hit. Then, for reasons not clear, obesity and shriveled tendons tend to be regular syndromes in the clones. Dolly, at the age of 5, has a severe case of arthritis.

Every major religion (except for the Raelians) condemns it.

And what's the point? To harvest organs? No way. To replicate yourself? What if your clone didn't turn out as well as you did? What would that say? Or what if it turned out better? That would be worse.

No, this is mischief-making of the first order, driven by vanity, greed and gullibility.

And it's also mischief-making of the second order, because it gives cloning itself a bad name. That's right. There is a legitimate argument for research on the cloning of fetal cells for therapeutic use - one that faces a lot of opposition, admittedly - but if cloning gets mixed up with a cult that worships little green men called Elohim, then forget about it.

Up to now, the Clonaid people aren't saying who the clone was born to, or where. Yesterday, prosecutors in South Korea said they had raided the offices of Clonaid's local affiliate, suggesting possible Korean involvement in the case. (If North Korean strongman Kim Jong Il ever gets his hands on the technology, we may be wishing he'd stuck to missiles and nukes. Imagine a world full of "Dear Leaders.")

The good news is, this is the heart of the silly season, when everyone gets a little giddy. Maybe this is a hoax pure and simple and we should just grin and enjoy it. But the writing's on the wall, and it won't be long before science has outpaced all the heavy thinking about ethics and legality. It's going to happen, and it's deeply troubling.