London, England - A controversial Italian fertility expert will tell a gathering of American scientists Tuesday that he plans to launch a human cloning experiment in the fall, and expects the first cloned baby to be born next year.
The National Academy of Sciences will have the opportunity to hear, and to question, Prof. Severino Antinori, who said at the weekend he has 200 infertile couples from various countries lined up to undergo the experiment.
A joint panel of the body's Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy and the Board on Life Sciences is investigating the cloning issue and related ethical questions.
Tuesday's information-gathering meeting in Washington, D.C., is aimed at helping the panel undertake "a clear, unbiased examination of the state of the science in this area as lawmakers and the public grapple with public policy and ethical issues," the Academy's media office said.
Other specialists who will address the meeting include Antinori's American colleague, Dr. Panayiotis Zavos of Lexington, Ky., and Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute in Scotland, creators of the world's first cloned vertebrate, Dolly the sheep.
Wilmut on Sunday called Antinori's plans "horribly irresponsible," pointing out the very low success rate in animal cloning experiments.
"Its likely outcome would be very late abortions, babies who die soon after birth and children who survive but have some abnormality. Some of the problems would only be detectable weeks or days before birth and some of the things you would not be able to see."
Antinori said in a weekend newspaper interview he would carry out the work in an as-yet unnamed Mediterranean country, but acknowledged that legal opposition may force him eventually to work on a ship in international waters.
The tactic of circumventing legal restrictions by carrying out contentious activities while sailing outside countries' territorial boundaries is being used currently by a group of Dutch abortionists, and a euthanasia campaigner from Australia said recently he hoped to do the same.
Antinori said he and a 20-strong team of specialists would treat the couples for free.
He plans to remove cells from the infertile man's skin, extract its nucleus and inject it into an egg of the woman which has had its own nucleus removed. Fertilization will then be artificially brought about, and the embryo implanted into the woman's uterus to be carried to term.
Last week the House of Representatives passed legislation to outlaw all forms of human cloning in the United States.
The procedure Antinori plans to follow is also banned in Britain, although the cloning of human embryos to provide stem cells for disease research - "therapeutic" cloning - was legalized here earlier this year. Embryos created for this purpose are destroyed after being stripped of their cells.
Pro-life campaigners in Britain argued Monday that cloning for live birth and therapeutic cloning were both wrong.
Antinori's plans were the inevitable outcome of British scientists' and politicians' promotion of therapeutic cloning, said Paul Tully, secretary-general of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC)
Noting that Antinori last March applauded the British government for pushing through regulations to allow cloning for stem cell research, Tully said that without Britain's lead, the Italian's plans for reproductive cloning would not have been feasible. "The two techniques share many key aspects."
Adding its voice to concerns about the implications of cloning a child, SPUC warned that clones could find themselves stigmatized and forming a "genetic underclass."
It also pointed to the high failure rate with animal cloning, where many clones are lost at various stages of the process.
"In the case of human cloning, these will be real people who are discarded as part of this sinister manipulation of the otherwise natural reproductive process."
Prof. Jack Scarisbrick, national director of another pro-life group, Life, voiced concern that public pressure would eventually result in reproductive cloning becoming legal in Britain.
Pro-Life Infonet
07. august 2001