LONDON, Aug 7, 2001 (LSN.ca) – Panos Zavos, a professor of reproductive physiology at the University of Kentucky, and Italian fertility doctor Severino Antinori, are in Washington today defending their plans to clone human beings before a panel of the National Academy of Sciences. Zavos, co-founder of a fertility clinic in Lexington and an andrologist and a member of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, said the international team of scientists plans to commence impregnating women with cloned human embryos this November.
Antinori recently captured headlines when his in vitro work led to a woman in her sixties giving birth. He told La Stampa, an Italian newspaper, that 1,300 couples in the US and 200 in Italy have volunteered to be impregnated with cloned embryos. The team plans to impregnate up to 200 women with the cloned embryos.
The cloning technique used is similar to that used by the Scotland's Roslin Institute to clone Dolly the sheep. However, Dr. H. D. Griffin, assistant director at the Roslin Institute, has said that attempts to clone humans are unacceptable and will lead in many cases to deformities, fetal death, and shortened life spans if indeed cloned humans are born. “Where animals have been cloned, the success rate – the number of reconstructed embryos that make it to a live birth – is around one to two percent, and so the process is very inefficient,” he said. However, Antinori answered his critics saying that he would screen the human embryos for deformities and kill those he found abnormal. “I can guarantee 99% that I will not produce any monsters,” Antinori told the London Times.
Drudge Report notes that the Italian Medical Association has already launched disciplinary action against Prof Antinori for his stated plans which would violate European cloning guidelines. Antinori acknowledged that international hostility to cloning is such that he may be forced to work in a remote country or even on a boat in international waters.
The Vatican's Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger reacted to the news saying the scientists were trying to “emulate Hitler.” Ratzinger was quoted in several Italian newspapers Tuesday as saying that “copying children, for reasons other than treating sterility, is Nazi madness.”