A rchive Date
[ 28-01-2001 ]
Category
[ Science ]
sub-Categoy
[ Biotechnology ]
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[Two scientists plan to clone humans
Foes raise possibility of deformities, deaths
By AARON ZITNER Los Angeles Times
Jan. 27, 2001, 10:25PM
WASHINGTON - A well-known Italian fertility specialist and his American colleague have announced plans to clone human beings, apparently becoming the first scientists with expertise in human reproduction to publicly set such a goal.
They may succeed, cloning experts said Saturday - but not without causing great damage.
Cloning would likely produce stillborn and diseased children, they said. It also might provoke lawmakers to seek bans on a broad range of medical research, such as work that uses human embryos to try to cure disease.
The two scientists stressed that their cloning procedure would be offered only to couples who cannot bear children by other means.
"We are serious people and have a track record to show for it," said Panayiotis M. Zavos, professor of reproductive physiology at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. "Cloning has already been developed in animals. The genie is out of the bottle. It's a matter of time when humans will apply it to themselves, and we think this is best initiated by us with ethical guidelines and quality standards. "
Zavos said he is working with Italian researcher Dr. Severino Antinori, who has already pushed the boundaries of fertility treatment by helping women become pregnant well after menopause, including a 62-year-old woman.
He said Saturday that they had lined up 10 infertile patients who want to be cloned and 10 other researchers who want to help. He declined to name any. He said the work would be done in an undisclosed foreign country.
Cloning experts said the announcement signals that the technology has matured and is bound to force its way onto the agenda of U.S. politicians and regulators.
No federal law bars cloning in the United States, though the Food and Drug Administration has said anyone seeking to use it as a reproductive tool would need agency approval.
Cloning specialists said they feared Zavos and Antinori might provoke a backlash against medical research by raising fears that scientists have crossed ethical boundaries.
Indeed, the cloning announcement came at a sensitive time: On Friday, President Bush expressed his personal opposition to federal funding for research that uses tissue from aborted fetuses. The comment raised concern among some scientists that Bush might try to thwart plans to fund fetal- and embryo-cell research, which aims to cure diabetes, Parkinsons' disease and other ailments.
The cloning plan "just invites prohibitions across the board that shuts down the very research we need to cure disease," said Ronald Green, a bioethicist at Dartmouth University in Hanover, N.H.
Equally worrisome to some researchers is that when cloning fails, it often fails in gruesome ways. For every successfully cloned cow, sheep or goat, dozens of others fail to grow in the womb, die at childbirth or perish soon after birth from deformities.
"As far as cloning a human being, it's definitely an achievable feat - unsafe and unethical, but achievable with the right resources and know-how," said Dr. Robert P. Lanza, vice president of scientific development at Advanced Cell Technology Inc. in Worcester, Mass. The company has cloned cows and goats. "Cloning is conceptually very simple, so someone with the drive has a real chance of succeeding," Lanza said.
The problem, said Rudolph Jaenisch, a cloning expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., is that "there will very likely be defects, and this is very irresponsible."
Cloning is genetically duplicating an individual. Though the offspring may not look or behave like the parent, it has the same genes.
Zavos said he is aware that many cloning efforts produce flawed embryos. But he said existing techniques, and those he and his team hope to develop soon, will give scientists the ability to determine which embryos will grow successfully and which will fail.
Zavos said his goal is to develop cloned human embryos within two years.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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