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 XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SUN NOV 25 2001 20:04:39 ET XXXXX SCIENTIST PLANS CLONING BIRTH LEXINGTON, Kentucky-- As news of the first cloned human embryo to be grown in a lab spread publicly this weekend, a scientist involved in a seperate controversial international project to clone humans, Panayotis Zavos, is vowing to transfer cloned embryos into a womb, hoping for eventual birth! "We will be attempting pretty soon the first nuclear transfers," Zavos told the AFP wire in an interview. "As we speak, we are running now." He said the production of the cloned embryos would take place sometime before the end of the year, or at the start of 2002 at the latest, but would not give an exact date. Ten couples who are unable to have children on their own are participating in his research, conducted in two secret laboratories in one or two countries which Zavos refused to name. "We've done it in animals, and we've done nuclear transfers of human cells into an animal ovocyte, but we haven't done a nuclear transfer of a human cell into a human ovocyte," or early-stage egg, Zavos said. Zavos, a Greek Cypriot naturalized US citizen, belongs to an international consortium of about 12 specialists on human reproduction, including Italian physician Severino Antinori, which in January announced plans to clone a human being. Zavos and Antinori said they would eventually impregnate up to 200 women with cloned embryos. Their initial target is to create embryos by transferring the nucleus of a cell from one of the two parents into an ovocyte extracted from a woman. These three-to-five-day-old embryos will then be frozen and studied to determine whether they present genetic, biochemical or physiological flaws, explained Zavos, director of the Andrology Institute here, which specializes in treatment of male sterility. Once they have determined that the embryo is normal, the team will proceed to implant it in the would-be mother's uterus. The resulting infant will be an almost identical genetic copy of one of its two parents. Scientists long have warned about a multitude of difficulties associated with cloning mammals, including miscarriage, premature delivery, genetic abnormalities and stillbirths. The most outspoken critics have warned that in the process of creating a healthy human clone, scientists could create dozens of deformed human specimens. But, pointing to his 23 years' experience in reproductive medicine, Zavos said he was confident he could produce a normal embryo, thanks to a careful diagnostic process before and after implantation. "We can screen things with humans much better than they've done with animals and therefore we are going to pick up any deficiencies in those embryos. Then we would continue to screen those embryos post-implantation," he said. Two bills that would prohibit reproductive cloning are currently before the US Congress. Zavos in the past has brushed aside such opposition, saying no one could stop the human cloning research, especially since he does not plan to conduct it in the United States. "Banning it for America, it's not going to be banned for the world," Zavos said. "Reproductive cloning is going to be developed inevitably, either by us or somebody else." ----------------------------------------------------------- Reports are moved when circumstances warrant http://www.drudgereport.com for updates (c)DRUDGE REPORT 2001 Not for reproduction without permission of the author |
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