The Hindu : First cloned baby on the way, claims doctor

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jan 20, 2004

International

International

First cloned baby on the way, claims doctor

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, JAN. 19. An American doctor has caused a stir in British medical circles after he claimed at a press conference in London on Saturday that he had implanted a cloned human embryo into a 35-year-old woman paving the way for the world's first cloned baby.

But Dr. Panos Zavos gave no details about the woman and refused to offer any medical evidence, prompting a wave of scepticism and condemnation. His claim was likened to the one made by the Raelian sect last year that it had produced the world's first designer baby.

Pressed by journalists to provide evidence, he retorted: ``What I have announced here today....you can take it or leave it.''

But he admitted that there was only 30 per cent chance of the woman becoming pregnant. ``I do not have a pregnancy to announce-stand by for two or three weeks,'' he said.

Dr. Zavos, a fertility expert at Kentucky University, infuriated scientists when he mocked two of Britain's most respected medical journals Nature and Science saying he would not want his work to be published or reviewed in them because they did not have sufficient expertise.

Dismissing his claim, a spokesman of the Royal Society, Britain's leading science body, said: ``If and when he provides the evidence, I am sure scientists and doctors will look with interest. What is more worrying is, without being sure of any substance to the claim, some infertile couples may have their hopes falsely raised.''

Fertility experts from a range of institutions questioned Dr. Zavos' claim and called the experiment itself ``unethical'' and ``dangerous'' pointing out that 99 per cent clones normally died in the womb and the remaining one per cent developed problems. In Britain, cloning is illegal and the secretary of state for health John Reid said such experiments were a ``gross misuse of genetic science.''

Dr. Zavos said the cloned embryo was grown from skin cells taken from the woman's husband and the implanting was filmed.

The process was similar to the one that created Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal, he said.

Two years ago, he had provoked a similar controversy when he claimed that he had successfully cloned a human embryo and hoped to see the birth of a baby within months.

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