Second attempt to clone human fails

A maverick fertility doctor announced yesterday that he has for a second time failed in his attempts to implant a cloned human embryo into a woman's womb.

Panos Zavos travelled from his fertility clinic in Kentucky to an expensive London hotel to publicise his failure at producing the world's first cloned baby.

Professor Zavos claimed - without producing any evidence - that he had created four cloned IVF embryos, which he had then implanted into a 33-year-old woman living in the Middle East.

He refused to name the country where the controversial experiment took place and admitted that he has not submitted the study to a scientific journal for peer review - the accepted way of publishing research.

The controversial scientist told journalists at a press conference that he had created the four embryos from the skin cells of the woman's husband, a 35-year-old man who is incapable of producing any sperm.

In January 2004, Professor Zavos caused a sensation when he announced - again without producing any evidence - the creation of a single cloned human embryo that he subsequently implanted into the womb of a woman.

He made a further attempt this summer with another woman, this time using the technique of transferring several embryos at the same time into the womb to increase the chances of success.

"They were properly evaluated and transferred at the four-to-eight cell stage embryo and we had great expectations for success," Professor Zanos said.

"I think the whole team said that this woman is pregnant... [but] there was no pregnancy realised," he said.

"You might say why are you talking to us about my failures? What we know today is what we learn from our failures not only from our successes.

"We expected a pregnancy, we didn't get a pregnancy which means that next time we will do something slightly different," Professor Zavos said.

"I can only tell you that people who carry cloned embryos are the only ones who are going to get a cloned pregnancy in the future and so far we're the only ones who have done it," he added.

Fertility doctors, specialists in reproductive medicine and leading medical ethicists condemned Professor Zavos for attempting a technique that is widely viewed as highly dangerous and morally dubious.

Work on cloned animals shows that the technique has a high failure rate and many foetuses develop abnormalities in the womb, are born with congenital defects or die prematurely.

Professor Zavos dismissed the published scientific data on the inherent dangers of reproductive cloning arguing that the risks he took with his patients are acceptable.

"There are risks we take every day for a couple to reproduce whether it is via IVF or via intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection. There are risks involved," he said.

"Over the last 27 years that I've been involved in reproductive medicine I was never involved in the production of one single abnormal child and I intend to keep it that way," he added.

Asked why he decided to announce the failure at a press conference rather than write it up as a scientific paper, Professor Zanos said: "We can only submit so many things at any particular time. We publish manuscripts all the time.

"The manuscript is ready for submission. Whether it will be next week when I go back or the week after, obviously that's really insignificant.

"Not every journal wishes to publish our work because they don't want to take any chances on a controversial subject," he said.

Professor Zavos also announced that he is working on developing another technique called "embryo splitting" to boost the number of embryos a woman can produce by IVF.

The method involves taking an embryo and dividing it into two, a similar way to the natural twinning process that produces identical twins.

"Plans are firmly in progress to offer this technology to infertile couples and believe it or not we have several infertile couples who wish to undergo this procedure," he said.

- INDEPENDENT