First human clone bid planned

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First human clone bid planned

By CNN's Graham Jones

ROME, Italy (CNN) -- A controversial Italian doctor is to announce plans to impregnate 200 women to try to create the world's first cloned human baby.

Professor Severino Antinori is to unveil his plans -- backed by extensive private funding -- before the National Association of Sciences in Washington D.C. on Tuesday.

He will say he hopes to begin a human cloning programme in November using 200 infertile couples.

One of Antinori's associates, Dr Panos Zavos of the Andrology Institute of America, told CNN the announcement would be made on Tuesday though he stressed it would be an "attempt" and it required the women to actually become pregnant.

"We will reveal on Tuesday exactly how we are going to go about it," he said, adding that the methodology would be safe with genetic screening of the embryos.

Antinori, Director of the Rome's International Associated Research Institute (Raprui), said on Monday that his "therapeutic cloning" was a scientific development that could not and should not be stopped.

"You can't put up the barriers on therapeutic cloning," said Antinori, who earlier this year said up to 700 couples had volunteered to be part of his human cloning experiment.

"Cloning will help us put an end to so many diseases, give infertile men the chance to have children. We can't miss this opportunity," he told Reuters.

Antinori said he would use his speech to attack a sweeping ban on human cloning approved by the U.S. House of Representatives last week.

But leading fertility experts say that human cloning still presents a high risk of miscarriage, stillbirth or producing a disabled child. It took 277 attempts to produce the first cloned sheep, Dolly.

Professor Art Caplan, from the University of Pennsylvania, said the clone bid should not be carried out because of the safety implications.

"If you look at the carnage associated with animal cloning there is probably a ratio of about 290 dead embryos for every one that goes anywhere," he said.

"Dr. Zavos and his group have been kind of the high-flying, showbiz operators of cloning. They keep saying they're going to do this. I have to say, if you looked at the animal work that's been done, and the people who really know this procedure of cloning -- that is, veterinarians who try it in animals -- the procedure is just not safe," he said.

Pro-life groups who are outraged by the plans and Antinori has said he may be forced to work in a remote country or even on board a ship moored in international waters.

The technique is similar to the one used to produce Dolly the sheep and involves injecting cells from the infertile father into an egg, which is then implanted in the mother's uterus.

The resulting child would have the same physical characteristics as his father and infertile parents would not have to rely on sperm donors. Most of the males in the volunteering couples are infertile.

Washington's human cloning conference on Tuesday comprises a joint panel of the U.S. National Academies' Committee on Science, Engineering Public Policy and the Board of Life Sciences.

It will discuss the scientific, medical and ethical issues involved in human cloning, and also look at the confusion outside the scientific community on the differences between human cloning and embryonic stem-cell research.

Ethical and religious groups argue Antinori's team and other cloning researchers are trying to "play God."

Antinori said he would argue in Washington that cloning is not a religious question," adding that President Bush was only against cloning because "he listens to the pope."

Last week, Bush said human cloning presented profound moral issues and said he welcomed the approval of congressional ban as "a strong ethical statement."

"We must advance the promise and cause of science but do so in a way that honours and respects life," Bush said.

Meanwhile European pro-life groups on Monday predicted cloning will eventually be legalised.

Professor Jack Scarisbrick, British national director of Life, said there was "no doubt whatsoever" reproductive cloning would eventually become legal in the UK.

Britain's House of Lords voted earlier this year to legalise only the cloning of human embryos for therapeutic, or research purposes, a move praised by Antinori.

"The pressures will be great. When people hear a story about couples who have lost a child and want to replace it, they will consent to it, inevitably," Scarisbrick said.

Antinori is no stranger to controversy. His Rome fertility clinic produced a 62-year-old mother of a baby in 1994. Two years he later helped a 59-year-old British unmarried mother to have twins.

In March this year the Italian doctor, determined to push ahead with his cloning plans, accused the Vatican of starting a new Inquisition against science.

"I haven't committed any crime," Antinori said. "To think and do research is still not forbidden."

The Vatican holds that no human being should be denied the fundamental right to be conceived and born the natural way and says human cloning is "grotesque."

"We seem to have returned to the old times of the Inquisition," Antinori said. "We are working for humanity to help man, not to create anything negative."

Antinori said: "Cloning creates ordinary children. They will be unique individuals, not photocopies of individuals."

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/08/06/clone.doctor



-- Cherri (jessam6@home.com), August 06, 2001

Answers

This means your clone has a chance of understanding complex public policy issues.

-- Remember (the@ld.forum), August 06, 2001.

Jawold, The Boys from Brazil!

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), August 06, 2001.

A good little Sci-Fi/fantasy novel to read right about now is World enough, and Time. Genetic engineering gone crazy while natural disasters and war were tearing up the earth results in the setting of the novel, where centaurs, dryads, hobbitts, dragons, vampires, talking cats, nymphs, etc, populate a gone-to-seed earth along with humans. All these beings were made for fun, and made breedable, by decadent human genetic engineers hundreds of years before the novel takes place. It's a fun book, but pretty dark. The world it describes does have it's neat points, too, in a Star-wars cantina kind of way.

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), August 07, 2001.

The thought of cloning sets my imagination into motion. It would take decades to determine the results, but [in theory] we would learn quite a bit about the nature vs. nurture argument. We could clone J and put him in a family that didn't believe in spanking. We could clone ME and put me in a family that DID believe in spanking. Heck...we could clone ME and have ME raise ME and see if I'd turn out differently than the ME I've become. The possibilities are almost endless. You DO realize that I'm not suggesting this as a serious proposal, right?

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), August 07, 2001.

I volunteer to spank Anita!!!

-- Boswell (fundown@thefarm.net), August 07, 2001.


Anita, reminds me of the scene in Being John Malkovich where John goes into his own brain. He sees a world of nothing but John Malkoviches, and the horror almost does him in. Understandably.

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), August 07, 2001.

Clonal reproduction:

What does it mean to you? It is used in a very "sloppy" way in the press and on this board.

Technically, it has been used for centuries with plants [excluding the plants that post here :)] and for some time in animals. There is general confusion between cloning and recombinant techology.

Exactly, how are you defining this term?

Best Wishes,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), August 07, 2001.


I just hope nobody defines it as "making exact copies of yourself, who then show up in your house at night unannounced, strangle you, and take your place in a society increasingly made up of emotionless, evil clones, until the last original humans band together in the sewers to plan the re-ascension of a thinking, feeling race who cares about their children, dammit, and not about making more clones to eventully populate the cosmos with an unthinking, insect-like race of psuedo-humans."

As long as no-one involved defines it like that, I can probably live with it.

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), August 07, 2001.


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