Scientists Clash Over Cloning: Is It Criminal or a Miracle?

The world's top scientists clashed repeatedly and publicly at a conference in Washington this week over whether human cloning would be safe or ethical.

The United States is among many nations currently considering laws to make human cloning a crime. But this was not a carbon copy of the usual debate of the pros and cons. Some scientists now say they will attempt to produce the first human baby through cloning--and very soon. Bob Orr in Washington explains.

In the 4_ years since scientists in Scotland created a sheep named Dolly, controversy has been building over the possibility that humans too some day may be cloned.

Today, three fertility researchers told the National Academy of Sciences that day is nearly here.

"We will get there, because very simply, it's a matter of determination," says Panos Zavos, of the Andrology Institute of America.

Zavos told CBS News he's already working in two secret locations and hopes to clone a human embryo by the end of the year.

"We're gonna clone a few individuals at the beginning and then we're gonna continue that. We have thousands of candidates," says Zavos.

But the plan to clone a human being is almost universally condemned by scientists who point out that animal cloning has a huge failure rate. Scientist Ian Wilmut cloned Dolly.

"The most likely attempted outcome if they do attempt to copy a person would be late abortions, dead babies, and worst of all children that were alive but abnormal," says Wilmut.

To clone a human being, scientists would take donor DNA from a man or a woman and insert it into an egg that has had all of its genetic material removed.

The egg then would be manipulated in a laboratory to develop into an embryo before being implanted into a woman's uterus. If the procedure works--and a baby is born--the infant would be a genetic copy of the DNA donor.

Ethicists call it bad science.

"To think about human cloning when animal cloning is so unknown at this point is really irresponsible. So we're simply not in a position to do human cloning, or really seriously to talk about it at this point," says Jonathan Moreno, a biomedical ethicist at the University of Virginia.

And scientists at today's forum were contemptuous. The discussion was not always polite.

Zavos is working with fertility doctor Severino Antinori, who gained notoriety in 1994 when he helped a 62-year-old woman have a baby.

They were joined by a biochemist with ties to a group that believes in extraterrestrial life and views cloning as a path to immortality.

"I do believe that we have enough information today to proceed and do the human cloning," says Brigitte Boisselier of Clonaid.

The House of Representatives just last week voted to ban human cloning in the US. Many other countries have done the same. But advocates of human cloning insist they'll find a way.
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