Cloning Humans Shipped Out To Sea?

Amidst severe criticism, Italian doctor Severino Antinori is scheduled to start a cloning program in November in which he will impregnate up to 200 women with cloned embryos by the same method used to clone Dolly the sheep five years ago. His desire is to help infertile couples who have no other way to produce children. The technique involves inserting the nucleus of a cell from the father into the prospective mother's egg cell after the egg's nucleus has been removed. The embryo will therefore contain genetic material from both mother and father and will be implanted into the mother's womb.

There is great opposition to human cloning from scientists and politicians as well as from groups with ethical concerns. The House of Representatives voted last week to completely ban all human cloning in the United States. Because of similar sentiments in other countries, Antinori is considering moving the cloning project onto a boat in international waters to avoid the laws of any one country.

Besides the moral and ethical issues raised simply by the prospect of doing research on human beings, however small or young, there is also concern that the embryos that survive implantation will still face high risks of miscarriage, stillbirth, or physical disability. Dolly, the famous cloned sheep born in 1997, was the only successful birth out of hundreds of embryos. Many other animals have been cloned since, with a great deal of waste in the process. Even when the embryos survive pregnancy and birth, they may still die unexpectedly, as did the calves born at a CSU farm earlier this year. Dolly, though strong and young physically has been shown to have 'old' chromosomes. If any human clones survive pregnancy and birth, they will have a substantially high risk of chromosomal abnormalities, poor immune systems and other physical and genetic defects.

Antinori has stated, "We have the techniques we need. We will never allow a deformed child to be born." Dr. Peter Brinsden, a medical doctor at a leading fertility center nearCambridge, disagrees with Antinori. He resigned from a group advising Antinori with the statement, "It is still too early." While Dr. Antinori has good intentions, the experiments will likely produce hundreds of dead children and disappointed, childless couples.