Controversial Italian Team Says It's Ready to Clone Humans

A controversial Italian doctor who is determined to be the first in the world to clone a human being will address a meeting at the National Academy of Sciences today in Washington, DC. Dr. Severino Antinori plans to speak against a sweeping ban on human cloning that was approved by the US House of Representatives last week.

Antinori plans to begin an embryo cloning program in November despite the opposition of the Italian and American governments. The FDA has promised that it will not allow cloning, and Italian medical authorities said on Monday that Antinori is risking his medical license. But Antinori told La Stampa, an Italian paper, that he has 1,300 American couples (mostly from Kentucky) and 200 Italian couples who have expressed interest in embryo cloning; the November program will get underway with 200 couples.

In this project, he is working with an international team of doctors that includes University of Kentucky Professor Panayiotis (Panos) Zavos, who said today on CNN that he and Antinori will proceed with their plan to clone a human before the end of the year. Their plan will be carried out "somewhere in the world"--but not in the United States--and has culled 200 volunteer couples from a number of different countries. Zavos will also attend Tuesday's meeting of the National Academy of Sciences on Tuesday.

The process involves taking DNA from a single adult cell and fusing it electrically with an egg that has had its genetic material removed, thereby creating an egg with "new" DNA. Eggs that divide to form embryos will be implanted in a surrogate, several at a time. Experts estimate that as many as 50 surrogates might be needed to ensure nine or ten pregnancies. Most of these will result in deformed fetuses that will be terminated, either spontaneously or by decision. No one can say if any of the children, once carried to term, will be normal.

The child will be the equivalent of a twin to the person whose DNA was used to create him or her, but will grow up in a different environment.

If it works the same way as animal cloning, it promises to be both a risky and inefficient process, requiring a large number of egg donors and surrogates to create and carry embryos. Most of these will never come to term. Some might be damaged in ways that will become apparent only after birth.

Zavos has retired from the University of Kentucky and is now professor emeritus. He is also the director of the Andrology Institute of America, in Lexington, Kentucky, a service that diagnoses and treats male infertility, and the associate director of the Kentucky Center for Reproductive Medicine and IVF.

He isn't an MD, but he has a PhD in reproductive physiology. Zavos spoke with the Early Show about his cloning plans.

He says there are more than half-a-dozen doctors on the team but will not disclose the location of the project, describing it as "somewhere in the world."

The 200 couples that are proceedin with the cloning have been screened and were chosen from the more than 1,500 couples that expressed interest. Zavos says the cloning process will begin in November and proceed in groups of eight to ten couples.

A good success rate, according to Zavos, would result in the birth of six to ten healthy babies next year.

In approximately 75% of these cases, the babies will be male (that is, clones of the husbands). This reflects the fertility issues facing these couples (75% have male fertility problems) and in part represents a scientific decision on the part of Zavos and his colleagues. It is easier, says Zavos, to insert a man's DNA into a viable female egg that will be carried by the generator of that egg than it is to insert the woman's own DNA into the egg or to use surrogates to carry a donor egg.

Zavos and his colleagues will not be charging the couples for these services. The project is "privately funded."
©MMII CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed