Tuesday, 30 January, 2001, 17:08 GMT
Cloned human planned 'by 2003'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1144000/1144694.stm
By BBC News Online's Alex Kirby
A private consortium of scientists plans to clone a human being within the
next two years.
The group says it will use the technique only for helping infertile couples
with no other opportunity to become parents.
It says the technology will resemble that used to clone animals, and will be
made widely available.
One member said the group hoped to produce the world's first baby clone
within 12 to 24 months.
It was founded by an Italian physician, Dr Severino Antinori, whose work
includes trying to help post-menopausal women to become pregnant.
A spokesman for the group is Panos Zavos, professor of reproductive
physiology at the University of Kentucky, US.
No alternative
He said it would "develop guidelines with which the technology cannot be
indiscriminately applied for anybody who wants to clone themselves".
As with animal cloning, he said, the technology would involve injecting
genetic material from the father into the mother's egg, which would then be
implanted in her womb.
"The effort will be to assist couples that have no other alternatives to
reproduce and want to have their own biological child, not somebody else's
eggs or sperm", Professor Zavos said.
He said he believed human cloning was achievable. It could at first cost
$50,000 or more, but he hoped that could come down to around the cost of in
vitro fertilisation, about $10,000 to $20,000.
Professor Zavos said he was well aware of the ethical dimensions of the
project.
"The world has to come to grips [with the fact] that the cloning technology
is almost here," he said. "The irony about it is that there are so many
people that are attempting to do it, and they could be doing it even as we
speak in their garages.
"It is time for us to develop the package in a responsible manner, and make
the package available to the world. I think I have faith in the world that
they will handle it properly."
'Irresponsible' plan
But the plans of Professor Zavos and his colleagues received an
unenthusiastic response in the UK.
Dr Harry Griffin is assistant director of the Roslin Institute, Scotland,
which successfully cloned Dolly the sheep.
He told BBC News Online: "It would be wholly irresponsible to try to clone a
human being, given the present state of the technology.
"The success rate with animal cloning is about one to two per cent in the
published results, and I think lower than that on average. I don't know
anyone working in this area who thinks the rate will easily be improved.
"There are many cases where the cloned animal dies late in pregnancy or soon
after birth.
"The chances of success are so low it would be irresponsible to encourage
people to think there's a real prospect. The risks are too great for the
woman, and of course for the child.
"I remain opposed to the idea of cloning human beings. Even if it were
possible and safe - which it's not - it wouldn't be in the interest of the
child to be a copy of its parent."
Tom Horwood, of the Catholic Media Office in London, told BBC News Online:
"A lot of our objections come down to questions of technique.
'Morally abhorrent'
"But beyond that, cloning human beings is inconsistent with their dignity,
and involves seeing them as a means, not an end.
"The scientists involved in the project are planning a conference in Rome to
explain their plans.
"I don't think you'll start getting lots of papal pronouncements just
because they're meeting in Rome.
"The reaction in the Vatican will be the same as everywhere else - that the
project is morally abhorrent and ethically very dubious."
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