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HEADLINE: The Double Vision Of 'Dr. Miracle'; Human Cloning Proponent Faces Scientists

BYLINE: Glenda Cooper, Washington Post Staff Writer

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As soon as the opportunity occurs, there's a rush for the stage. Reporters scramble frantically to get as close as possible; cameras appear from nowhere; pushing and shoving threaten an accident. The object of attention has his name shrieked continually.

This is not the mosh pit at a concert for the latest teen sensation. This extraordinary scene was in the staid confines of the National Academy of Sciences yesterday. "Dr. Miracle," as his grateful patients call him, was in town. Severino Antinori -- one of the most controversial doctors in the field of human fertility, the man who wants to be the first to create a human clone -- was in Washington answering questions from an international panel of independent scientists about his plans to create human clones. They wanted to know: Who would be eligible? What safeguards would there be? What are the risks of creating genetically abnormal or deformed clones?

With Antinori was his partner, Panayiotis Zavos, who has claimed that their attempts could begin within 60 days. Also appearing was Brigitte Boisselier, scientific director of Clonaid, the "world's first human cloning company." The Nitro, W.Va.-based firm, which offers to create clones for $ 200,000, was founded by the Raelian cult, whose members believe that life on Earth was created by extraterrestrial scientists.

To supporters, they probably appeared as the Three Musketeers -- intrepid warriors unafraid to say and go where others dared not. Judging by the hostile and often horrified reactions yesterday, their fellow scientists saw them more like the Three Witches from "Macbeth." "It's like a Barnum and Bailey circus," said R. Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin.

As usual Antinori, a silver-haired flamboyant 55-year-old, gave reporters some provocative quotes. Yes, he was happy to be in the United States but the vote in the House of Representatives July 31 to outlaw human cloning was taking the country back "into the Dark Ages." "It's like the Taliban in Afghanistan," he shouted at the mob of reporters who surrounded him on his way into the meeting. The Vatican, which has repeatedly criticized his work, is nothing more than a "criminal enterprise." "Clones create ordinary children who become individuals," he insisted.

Anyone who has followed Dr. Miracle's career shouldn't be surprised at the human cloning program. Antinori, who has given thousands of couples children through his three very successful fertility clinics in Italy, may be better known in Europe than in the United States -- although yesterday's events may help change this. He regularly makes headlines over his determination to push the boundaries of human reproduction.

In 1999 he announced that he would give 14 women a "millennium baby" -- timing the implantations of embryos so the babies could be delivered seconds after midnight on Jan. 1, 2000. In another media splash, he claimed he had helped infertile men to father children by cultivating their immature sperm in mouse testicles.

But the procedure that made his name was that of "le mamme-nonne" -- the granny-mommies, or women who had gone through menopause but then became pregnant through assisted-reproduction techniques. In 1994 Antinori helped 62-year-old Rosanna Della Corte become the oldest woman at the time to give birth.

The case gave many cause for concern. Della Corte, a farmer's wife from the village of Canino, north of Rome, gave birth to a son she named Riccardo. There were already ethical considerations of treating a woman so old, but the reason Della Corte had wanted a child was also worrying. Her 17-year-old son -- also called Riccardo -- had recently died in a motorcycle accident. The thought that she was seeking a replacement could not be avoided. Indeed, when BBC broadcaster Joan Bakewell interviewed Della Corte she described a woman still "convulsed by grief."

Perhaps Antinori has thought again: He announced yesterday that one of the criteria that would make a couple ineligible for his cloning program was the death of a child.

In an interview in Rome in 1999 with the British Daily Mail, he insisted that he had no regrets and that Della Corte was very happy. "I am not a maverick," he said then. "I am like Galileo or Alexander Fleming. When they discovered things, they were accused of being controversial. In the whole of scientific history, people have been accused of playing God when it's not true."

But did he have any ethical or moral worries about pushing the boundaries so far? "When the objective is to help men and women, then the objectives can justify everything. What is ethical is what is right for people."

At the National Academy of Sciences yesterday, he was more cautious. He said his cloning program would be available only to couples unable to conceive because the male is infertile and would exclude single women, couples whose child had died and childless couples who had waited until a late age before requesting help. (Presumably this would also exclude him as well: In the Rome interview, he said he had no desire to clone himself, that it would be a "stupid idea.")

The cloning would be done in a similar manner to that used to create Dolly the sheep. A nucleus is taken from a cell belonging to a man and inserted into a woman's egg cell, from which the nucleus has been removed. A resulting embryo -- which would be a genetically identical clone of the male donor -- is then implanted into the woman's uterus.

How long it will take before doctors achieve this is not clear: It took 277 attempts before Dolly's successful birth, and many of the scientists present yesterday warned that hidden genetic abnormalities in animal clones were just coming to light.

And where such endeavors would take place is problematic: A Mediterranean country, Eastern Europe or even a ship on international waters have all been mentioned in a global climate of growing hostility to cloning. Added to this, the Italian press reported Monday that Antinori has just received a warning from the vice president of Rome's medical association that he could be barred from practicing altogether if he carried through his cloning plans, which are illegal in Europe.

Antinori, however, maintains his vision: a future where having a child is an absolute human right. And if it means overriding biological norms or using cloning techniques to achieve it then he will do it. His concern is the happiness of his patients.

And you can be sure the dapper Italian will relish every moment of the fight with his peers in this next step into human reproduction. "Scientists should be free," he said yesterday. "I need, and will get, respect for what I do."



LOAD-DATE: August 08, 2001