Human cloning plan draws condemnation
Italian professor Severino Antinori and Greek Cypriot Panayiotis Zavos stated their intention of starting the process of creating a human clone in November this year. Speaking at a meeting of National academy of science in Washington, professor Antinori said that he would carry out his plans either in an unnamed Mediterranean country or on a ship in international waters and work would start 'in weeks'. The plans involve injecting cells from an infertile man into an egg, which is then implanted into the mother's uterus. According to Mr Zavos, this would be used only with people who have exhausted all other means of having children. According to Zavos and Antinori, there are 200 volunteers in Italy and 1,300 in the USA, mainly from Kentucky who are willing to help them. The majority of the other attendees at the event claimed that the plan was either impractical, unsafe or unethical. Rudolf Jaenisch, of the Massachusetts institute of technology (MIT) claimed that only one to five per cent of cloned animals survived and little improvement could be expected in human experiments. 'Even clones that survive often have severe abnormalities and die [prematurely] later,' he said. Ian Wilmut, who led the team that cloned Dolly the sheep at the Roslin institute in Scotland, said: 'Animal cloning is inefficient in all species. Expect the same outcomes in other species: late abortions, dead children and surviving but abnormal children.' The experiment to create Dolly the sheep took 277 attempts before it was successful and even now, it is recognised that Dolly is larger than she should be. Alan Colman, research director of PPL therapeutics in Scotland (which collaborated with the Roslin institute in the creation of Dolly the sheep), summed up his feelings towards this new idea. 'The bottom line is practice makes perfect. But is it ethical to practice in humans? I think it isn't.' The experiment could not be carried out either in Europe, which has a Council of Europe convention, in place since March, banning human cloning, or the USA, whose House of Representatives voted to ban it at the end of July. Pressing ahead with the plans could lose Dr Antinori his license to practice altogether, it emerged shortly before the Washington meeting. On Monday, Mario Falconi, vice-president of Rome's medical association said that Dr Antinori was risking not being able to practice medicine in Italy again and had been asked to appear before the association's governing council. Professor Antinori has already drawn attention for some of his previous endeavours, such as helping produce a 62 year old mother in 1994 and helping an unmarried 59 year old woman have twins two years later.
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