Maverick scientists promise a human clone
Special report: the ethics of genetics
Julian Borger in Washington Wednesday August 8, 2001 The Guardian
Two renegade fertility specialists yesterday unveiled plans to clone a human embryo within a month and predicted the world's first cloned baby would be born next year in a dramatic announcement that prompted uproar and alarm from mainstream scientists.
The announcement at the US National Academy of Sciences in Washington has begun the countdown to a much heralded but largely unwelcome turning point in scientific history: a maverick experiment in human cloning that will be undertaken without government supervision and despite warnings of horrendous consequences for its human guinea pigs.
Panayiotis Zavos and Severino Antinori said 2,000 women with fertility problems had volunteered for the experiment. They will choose a shortlist of 200, including "three or four" British couples, who will be implanted with 10 cloned embryos at a time.
The plan, announced at a conference on cloning, was denounced as dangerous and immoral by the mainstream scientific community. They warned it would lead to miscarriages and the development of deformed babies.
"I think it's dreadful," said Alan Colman, the research director of PPL Therapeutics, an Edinburgh-based private company which helped pave the way for the cloning of Dolly the sheep five years ago.
He said cloning techniques in animals were improving through trial and error but it would be unacceptable to experiment on humans in the same way.
"If you're asking is it worth wasting a few deformed foetuses to get the process going better, I say it should not be done. We're talking about destroying the health of a potential human being," he said. He added it was impossible to screen the embryos before implantation because many abnormalities appeared only at later stages of development.
Mr Zavos, formerly a researcher at Kentucky University who now runs an organisation called the Andrology Institute, shrugged off the warnings. He said he expected the success rate in cloning human embryos would be more than 30%, and therefore higher than success rates for in vitro fertilisation (IVF) techniques.
Mr Zavos gave a timetable for his team's plans yesterday. "Within a month or so" they planned to clone an embryo by removing the nucleus from a human egg and replacing it with DNA taken from the cells of a living donor. This would be done several times to maximise the chances of success. The cloned embryos would be frozen until the decision was made to implant them in a volunteer's womb.
"If they withstand scrutiny we plan to transfer the first cloned embryo [early in] 2002, so at the end of 2002 the first cloned human baby will be born," he said.
Mr Zavos would not say where he planned to carry out the experiment, saying only it would not be in the US, where the house of representatives last week voted to ban all forms of human cloning. He played down speculation it would be done on a boat, saying: "We have lots of lovely places to go to."
Professor Antinori, an Italian gynaecologist who gained notoriety five years ago by helping a 62-year-old woman have a child, has said the experiment would be carried out in the Mediterranean area.
In mob scenes never witnessed before in the normally tranquil academy, Prof Antinori and Mr Zavos were pursued everywhere by a throng of television cameras and reporters.
At one point, a Christian activist, the Reverend Pat Mahoney, pursued Mr Zavos through the halls of the academy, excoriating him as a "disgrace" and a "shame to humanity".
Mr Zavos said:"They are calling us mad scientists, which of course we're not."
Yesterday's conference was called to confront the groups planning human cloning experiments with the dangers revealed by animal cloning. At times the moderators struggled to maintain order as the would-be cloners denounced their critics.
Mr Zavos pointed at the scientists ranged across from him and accused them of exaggerating the difficulties in cloning.
"We preach our cup is half full. You preach that our cup is half empty, and we don't buy that. We don't believe in a perfect world, you do," he told them.
However, Mr Zavos and Prof. Antinori seemed determined to press on.