Team Claims It Will Clone Humans
An Italian doctor and a U.S. researcher claim they will implant cloned human embryos in 200 female volunteers within the next few months, an effort that would mark the first known attempt at human cloning, and which is sure to complicate an already tangled debate in Congress over the procedure.
The two researchers, who say they are working with an international team of scientists, are acting outside the system of scientific review that applies to most reputable research, so it is impossible to assess the validity of their claims. Nonetheless, the announcement has drawn broad international condemnation on grounds that human cloning is unethical and would lead to deformed or otherwise unhealthy children.
The researchers, Dr. Severino Antinori, a well-known Italian fertility doctor, and Panos Zavos of Lexington, Ky., had announced plans in January to clone couples who cannot have children by other means. On Monday, they said they would begin producing cloned embryos in November with the goal of initiating pregnancies in 200 women, including some from the United States.
The researchers said they will lay out more details today at a conference on cloning at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington.
The researchers have refused to say where they will conduct the work but that it would not be in the United States. Human cloning is illegal in much of Europe and would require Food and Drug Administration approval in the United States. Antinori told the Italian newspaper La Stampa that 1,300 U.S. couples and 200 in Italy were being considered for the project.
Cloning is a process of producing a genetic twin of an existing organism. In mammals, it entails using DNA from an adult to create an embryo, which is then implanted in a surrogate mother and grown to term. Cows, goats and other animals have been successfully cloned, but the process often produces embryos that fail to grow or animals with diseases and deformities.
“I don’t know anybody reasonable or rational who thinks they should be going forward with this,” said Anthony Mazzaschi, assistant vice president for research at the Assn. of American Medical Colleges, of the human cloning effort.
Whatever its credibility, the claim that scientists will soon clone human beings could add a wrinkle to the debate in Congress over whether to bar the procedure.
There is broad support in Congress for barring the use of cloning to produce children--the kind of work that Antinori and Zavos claim they will do. But lawmakers are split over whether medical researchers should be allowed to use cloning in an attempt to grow replacement tissues for patients with diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and other maladies.
Last week, the House passed legislation that would make human cloning a felony that could bring a 10-year prison term and civil penalties of more than $1 million. The legislation applies both to cloning as a reproductive technique and medical research tool.
But some senators want to preserve cloning as a research tool, according to lobbyists and congressional aides. In 1998, a bill to bar all types of cloning died because of Senate support for the technique in medical research.
Normally, senators who support cloning in medicine would simply try to prevent the Senate from taking up the House legislation. But a do-nothing strategy becomes more difficult now, congressional aides said, because senators do not want to be seen as ignoring people like Zavos and Antinori.
