2 scientists announce plans for human cloning

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2 scientists announce plans for human cloning

Other experts worried about gruesome failures

01/28/2001

By Zitner / Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON - A well-known Italian fertility specialist and his U.S colleague

have announced plans to clone human beings, apparently becoming the first

scientists with expertise in human reproduction to publicly set such a goal.

They may well succeed, cloning experts said Saturday - but not without causing

great damage.

Cloning would probably produce stillborn and diseased children, they said, and

might provoke lawmakers to seek bans on a broad range of medical research, such

as work that uses human embryos to try to cure disease.

The two scientists stressed that their cloning procedure would be offered only

to couples who cannot bear children by other means.

" We are serious people and have a track record to show for it, " said Panayiotis

M. Zavos, professor of reproductive physiology at the University of Kentucky.

" Cloning has already been developed in animals. The genie is out of the bottle.

It's a matter of time when humans will apply it to themselves, and we think this

is best initiated by us ... with ethical guidelines and quality standards, " he

said.

Dr. Zavos said he is working with Italian researcher Dr. Severino Antinori, who

has already pushed the boundaries of fertility treatment by helping women become

pregnant after menopause, including a 62-year-old woman.

The two men announced their plans Thursday at a conference in Lexington, Ky.,

and Dr. Zavos said Saturday that they had lined up 10 infertile patients who

want to be cloned and 10 other researchers who want to help. He declined to name

any. He said the work would be done in an undisclosed foreign country.

Cloning experts said the announcement signaled that the technology has matured

and is bound to force its way onto the agenda of U.S. politicians and

regulators. No federal law bars cloning in the United States, though the Food

and Drug Administration has said anyone seeking to use it as a reproductive tool

would need agency approval.

Worrisome to some researchers is that when cloning fails, it often fails in

gruesome ways. For every successfully cloned cow, sheep or goat, dozens of

others fail to grow in the womb, die at childbirth or perish soon after birth

from deformities.

Cloning is a process for creating a genetic duplicate of an individual. Though

the offspring may not look or behave exactly like the parent, it has the same

genes.

Dr. Zavos, in an interview Saturday, said he was well aware that many cloning

efforts produce flawed embryos. But he said existing techniques, and those he

and his team hoped to develop soon, would give scientists the ability to

determine which embryos will grow successfully and which are bound to fail.

He added that his goal was to develop viable, cloned human embryos in 18 months

to two years.

Dr. Zavos said he and Antinori would hold an international meeting in Rome in

March to consider ethical guidelines.