Fertility Doc Plans to Clone Humans Italian made announcement with U.S. cohort 

Aaraon Zitner / Los Angeles Times 28jan01

Washington -- A well-known Italian fertility specialist and his U.S 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 well succeed, cloning experts said yesterday -- but not without causing great damage.

Cloning would likely produce stillborn and diseased children, they said, and 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. "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.

The two men announced their plans Thursday at a conference in Lexington, Ky. , and Zavos 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 signaled 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, although 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. Bush's comments raised concern among some scientists that he might try to thwart plans to fund fetal- and embryo-cell research, which aims to cure diabetes, Parkinson's disease and other ailments.

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.

Panayiotis M Zavos Professor, Male Reproductive Physilogy;  Sex Control Department of Animal Sciences University of Kentucky http://www.uky.edu/Ag/AnimalSciences/ 607 W P Garrigus Building 40526 Lexington, KY 40546-0215 Phone: 859- 257-7536 Fax: 859- 323-1027 Homephone: 859- 885-7681 University Main Phone: 859 257-9000 Email: panayiotis.m.zavos@no.mail.uky.edu

Cloning is a process for creating a genetic duplicate of an individual. Though the offspring may not look or behave exactly like the parent, it has the same genes.

Zavos, in an interview yesterday, said he was well aware that many cloning efforts produce flawed embryos. But he said existing techniques, and those he and his team hoped to develop soon, would give scientists the ability to determine which embryos will grow successfully and which are bound to fail.

He noted that many people in the field believe that rogue researchers are already working on human cloning, and that they may attempt to sell their services to wealthy people who want to clone out of vanity or as "investors who want to make another Michael Jordan."

Zavos, 56, said he has known Antinori for 15 years and began talking with him about the cloning project in 1988.