Doctors defiant on
cloning
Antinori and Zavos want an open debate on human
cloning
Doctors from Italy and the United States said
on Friday they intended to push ahead with
their plans to clone human beings, despite the
objections and doubts raised by religious and
scientific groups.
Italian Severino Antinori
and American Panayiotis
Zavos told a symposium
in Rome that they were
motivated solely by the
desire to help infertile
couples have children.
"Cloning may be considered as the last frontier
to overcome male sterility and give the
possibility to infertile males to pass on their
genetic pattern," Antinori told scientists and
journalists at the city's Umberto I Polyclinic.
"Some people say we are going to clone the
world, but this isn't true...I'm asking all of us in
the scientific community to be prudent and
calm," he said. "We're talking science, we're
not here to create a fuss."
Dolly the sheep
Antinori is no stranger to controversy. He
attracted criticism when he helped a
62-year-old woman give birth.
Panos Zavos, who
resigned earlier this
month from his post at
the University of
Kentucky after
announcing he was
going to work on the
cloning project, said
the researchers had
been bombarded with
e-mail from couples
eager to have children
through the new
technology.
"They come to us and they don't call you
names, they don't cuss you, they don't say
you're unethical," Zavos said. "They said, 'Help
me'.
Dolly is here and we are next," Zavos said,
referring to the sheep that became the first
adult mammal clone in 1996.
Developmental abnormalities
The plan has come under heavy fire from
mainstream scientists and religious groups,
with the Vatican describing the proposals as
"grotesque".
Experts working with
the animal clones doubt
whether Zavos and
Antinori can actually
make the technology
work in humans.
"The probability is that
it can be done but it is
not inevitable that it
can be done," said Dr
Harry Griffin, of the Roslin Institute, the
Scottish centre where Dolly was produced.
"Certainly, the efficiency [of animal cloning] in
published work is very low - around 2% of the
embryos that are created by cloning make it to
term.
"Critically for this debate, many of the animal
clones die late in pregnancy or soon after birth
and show developmental abnormalities."
Mediterranean clinic
Antinori attempted to play down some of the
dangers of cloning at the Rome symposium.
"Cloning creates ordinary children," he said.
"They will be unique individuals, not
photocopies of individuals."
He did not indicate which of the couples that
had volunteered would be chosen for the
programme, but said he had ruled out single
women and couples who wanted to have
another child after the death of other
offspring.
He gave no indication when or where he might
attempt cloning but said he had no intention of
breaking any laws.
"In Italy, there's no law yet that prohibits it,
we're respectful of laws," Antinori said.
He told the BBC he had an invitation from an
unnamed Mediterranean country to set up a
cloning clinic. |
