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BIOTECHNOLOGY ISSUES: US scientist expects to clone human embryo within one month - UPDATE by Rachel Rivera October 03, 2002 NEW YORK (AFX-GEM) - US scientist Panos Zavos, one of the leading
figures in the race to clone humans, said Thursday he expects to clone an
embryo and implant it in a woman within the next month. "Things are moving quite well. I've got seven to eight couples
ready to go now. We hope to have a pregnancy before the year is over, and
2003 hopefully will be the birth of a cloned human baby," he
said. Zavos, an infertility specialist and CEO of Zavos Diagnostics
Laboratories, which sells infertility treatment products, said he had just
returned from a visit to his laboratory overseas where his cloning
experiments are taking place. He would not disclose the
location. There are no existing laws in the US that specifically prohibit
reproductive human cloning. The technique has had a high failure rate in animals and resulted
in congenital malformations, physical deformities, immune system
deficiencies and premature aging in aborted fetuses and live
births. The United Nations has initiated groundwork for an international
treaty to adopt a global ban on reproductive human cloning, but its 191
member states have yet to agree on the extent of the ban. The president of US-based human cloning firm Clonaid, which is
linked to a UFO cult, said Wednesday that it had implanted cloned embryos
in several host mothers and that viable pregnancies were in
progress. Zavos dismissed Clonaid's claims as "a farce" to promote their
Geneva-based cult, known as the Raellians. Raellians believe
extraterrestrials populated the earth with clones of their race and that
it is incumbent upon humans to continue the tradition of
cloning. Zavos also discounted previous announcements by Italian researcher Severino Antinori that he had implanted cloned human embryos that ended in miscarriages. He said unlike the other researchers, ZDL would provide proof of
its results. According to Zavos, cloning is the only choice for infertile
couples when artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization fail to
produce results. "Our mission is to help infertile couples have biological
offspring of their own," he said. The cloning procedure involves removing the nucleus from an egg,
either from the mother or from an egg donor, implanting DNA from either
parent in its place, and transferring the resulting embryos into the womb
of the mother or a surrogate mother. "If I take the father's DNA, the baby is a copy of him. If I take
the mother's DNA it's her copy. We tailor the treatment for each couple
separately depending on their different needs," said Zavos. "The technology allows for creating multiple copies of people or
destroying them like artifacts," said Richard Hayes, executive director
for the Center for Genetics and Society in Oakland, California. |
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