If you really wanted to do it it could be done, said Ian Wilmut, the chief scientist at Scotland's Roslin Institute where the sheep experiment was carried out.
News that a sheep had been cloned using a cell from an adult sheep shocked the world and prompted a flurry of soul-searching about whether the technology was morally acceptable.
This week President Clinton banned federal funding of cloning and German Research Minister Juergen Ruettgers called for a worldwide ban on cloning human beings.
Danish scientists trying to produce cloned cattle said on Wednesday they were halting experiments pending a full debate.
The scientists behind the technique, developed at the Roslin Institute and PPL Therapeutics, told British parliamentarians Thursday work with human eggs would be distressing and offensive.
Wilmut said that if scientists were prepared to take the distressing step of working with 1,000 human eggs, the size of the experiment that produced the sheep breakthrough, you might expect to make significant progress in one or two years.
But he added: It is the unanimous view of the group within the institute and within the company that we would find this sort of work with human embryos offensive.
We could see no clinical reason why you would wish to make a copy of a person and we are pleased that it is already illegal in this country so we would support wholeheartedly the idea of (international) prohibition in as effective a way as possible.
Wilmut's testimony went directly against Ruth Deech of the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, which regulates fertility research, who said Wednesday she could see circumstances under which cloning people would be desirable.
She told the same committee that, for example, people at risk of having a baby with certain rare genetic disorders could instead be cloned, leaving the baby free of the defect.
Deech said there was no need for a blanket prohibition on human cloning but perhaps the law needed tweaking to make sure experiments were properly controlled.
But the scientists from PPL and the Roslin Institute defended their work with animals, saying it held out the prospect of cheaper food and new remedies for genetic diseases.
The Roslin and PPL researchers say cloning is a natural outgrowth of their research into animal breeding and the production of medicines from animal blood and milk.