Doctors determined to succeed in cloning humans

By ANDREW BUNCOMBE

Two scientists who have caused enormous controversy with their plan to clone humans said today that they had science and ethics on their side.

Severino Antinori, an embryologist, and Panayiotis Zavos, a specialist in reproductive physiology, intend to carry out experiments that will see more than 200 women impregnated with cloned embryos by the end of the year.

Their plans ­- which will be the world's first known attempt to produce a human clone - have been condemned by critics ranging from the Vatican to the US President, George Bush.

Today, appearing before a panel of the National Academy of Sciences that was meeting in Washington to discuss cloning technology, the two scientists said there was risk, but the women knew of the dangers.

"There is no such thing as total perfection in the business of human reproduction," Dr Zavos, the director of the Andrology Institute in Lexington, Kentucky, said.

"We feel this technology can be developed and can be made safe. We will get there ­- it's a matter of determination, and we are determined to get there."

Dr Antinori -­ the director of the International Associated Research Institute for Human Reproduction Infertility Unit in Rome, Italy ­- officially announced at the meeting that the experiments would go ahead.

He earlier told the Italian newspaper, La Stampa, that 1,500 couples, mostly from the US and Italy, would take part. Eight British couples are also said to be involved.

Dr Antinori -­ who came to worldwide attention in 1994 when he helped a 62-year-old woman have a child -­ said that today's meeting was a "good opportunity to explain. The public will understand and will change the opinion to positive".

Claims that the trials were a breach of medical ethics were "completely stupid", he said. "Ours will be an experiment of therapeutic cloning for those couples that have no hope of having children."

Dr Antinori said that because cloning was illegal in both Italy and the US -­ where the House of Representatives voted last week to outlaw it ­- he would have to carry out the experiments in an unnamed Mediterranean country.

"You can't put up the barriers on therapeutic cloning," he said.

"Cloning will help us put an end to so many diseases, give infertile men the chance to have children. We can't miss this opportunity. We have the techniques we need. We will never allow a deformed child to be born."

The announcement comes amid calls for worldwide laws against human cloning and threats from the Italian authorities to revoke Dr Antinori's medical licence. Critics said that the British scientists who famously cloned Dolly the sheep in 1997 had initially failed almost 300 times.

"At present there is no way to predict whether a given clone will develop into a normal or abnormal individual," said Rudolf Jaenisch, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Alan Colman, the research director of PPL Therapeutics in Scotland, said that cloning techniques were improving. "The bottom line is practice makes perfect. But is it ethical to practice on humans? I think it isn't."

In Britain, Parliament voted last January to permit stem cell research on human embryos, making the UK the first country to specifically allow the cloning of embryos for that purpose.

The legislation stipulated that the embryos had to be destroyed within 14 days.

US President George Bush said through a spokesman: "If the purpose is cloning a human being, the president is opposed to any effort to do that."

In Italy, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger claimed Dr Antinori, was trying to "emulate Hitler". He said "copying children, for reasons other than treating sterility, is Nazi madness".

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