PRO-LIFE campaigners have described a project to clone Britain's first human embryos by North-East scientists as "Frankenstein science".

Professor Jack Scarisbrick, of the charity Life, said: "I'm very upset at this manufacturing of a new kind of human being.

"This is out of control science, Frankenstein science that we do not need."

Researchers at Newcastle University have applied for permission to carry out the work, which is expected to be approved in weeks.

The scientists say it will not lead to the birth of a cloned baby.

They will only create early embryos that would be clones of patients with diabetes as part of a programme to study the disease.

Professor Alison Murdoch, director of Newcastle's Institute of Human Genetics and chair of the British Fertility Society, said the work could start as soon as a licence is granted by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). "We wouldn't be embarking on this work unless we felt we had a good chance of being successful," she said.

"This is still a basic science. It is going to be five to ten years at least before we can think of moving on to treat patients."

But Prof Scarisbrick said: "This is human life created for the removal of stem cells, the very extraction of which kills them.

"There is no intention of allowing them to live, they are only there for scientific experiments and it's totally unacceptable.

"It's manipulation of human life that should never be tolerated.

"We do not need these stem cells, we already have stem cells from umbilical cords and adults."

Women from the North-East undergoing fertility treatment will be asked to donate spare eggs for the research, to be used in what is known as a nuclear transfer cloning procedure.

Genetic material from a diabetic's skin cell will be transferred into a human egg, then stimulated to grow into an embryo.

The team of scientists at Newcastle's Centre for Life is one of only two to have already grown stem cells from human embryos. These cells can grow into any kind of tissue and are seen as vital for transplant medicine.

The work has been approved by Parliament, which means any kind of legal action to try to halt it would be pointless.

"The highest court in the land has said it is OK," said Prof Scarisbrick. "So we can't fight it legally."