-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! Australian scientist horrified at human clone plan By PAUL HEINRICHS Sunday 4 February 2001 Embryologist Panos Zavos. Two international medical scientists are trying to lure Victoria's top reproductive scientist, Alan Trounson, into a taboo-busting project aimed at cloning the first human being. First reports of the project indicated that an Australian couple and an Australian scientist were already lined up as part of an international effort to create a technological breakthrough. "This is an international problem that needs to be addressed with international experts," Panos Zavos, of Kentucky, told The Sunday Age last week, "and I think that Alan will be participating in this consortium - he's welcome to participate." Professor Zavos, who runs a fertility clinic in Lexington, says reputable scientists need to take an initiative on cloning before "the Saddam Husseins in this world" get their hands on the technology to replicate themselves. "Of course, we haven't asked him (Professor Trounson) as yet, but I'm sure he would be glad to and we would be glad to have him, because it is people like that that can make the difference." But Professor Trounson, the scientific director of the Monash IVF team and recently honored by the US Science magazine, is horrified by the plans, and is having none of it. "No way!" he replied. "I'm sure they would like anybody who would add credibility to the team to go on it. No way. No way!" Professors Severino Antinori and Zavos announced in Kentucky last week that they would try to produce the first cloned human within a year. Professor Antinori has a clinic in Rome, just around a corner from the Vatican. He is already notorious as the man who helped older British women - one of 63, another of 59 - to have babies. This led him into stormy TV debates with Britain's leader in this field, Lord Robert Winston. At the announcement, Professor Antinori stressed that he would consider only what he called "therapeutic cloning" to help infertile couples, such as an American pair whose male partner lost his testicles in an accident. Professor Zavos is a friend and colleague of Professor Antinori who says he will go to Rome in March to help form the international coalition of scientists. "Somebody has to be a catalyst in this world," Professor Zavos says. "We regard ourselves as the catalyst, but we're not going to be the gods. The moral of the story is that Antinori and I decided we have to take this from under the table to on the table." He believes the world will catch up ethically. "We listen to those people," he said. "Those are the people who keep us on our toes, who keep us thinking, but at the time, this is a kind of a dirty job but somebody has to do it, and it will be done. "The ethical issues obviously are for the world to decide. It is not for us. We're scientists." Dr Antinori is proposing that the work would be done in an unspecified Mediterranean country where he had permission to create humans through cloning. In Australia, the cloning of humans is outlawed under federal and state legislation, and many countries have similar laws. The technique outlined would essentially be the one used to clone animals such as Dolly the sheep, producing an exact genetic replica of its father. The baby would be created by taking the nucleus of a man's cell, probably a skin cell, and injecting it into a human egg that had been stripped of its own genetic material. After a few days, if the embryo began to develop, it would be implanted in the uterus of the "mother" in the hope of producing a healthy baby. But Professor Trounson, as well as condemning the scheme ethically, discounted the practicalities because reproductive technology had not yet reached a state where it could be done without causing harm. "We don't know, but one could imagine that if you could do other animal species, you could do a human, but what would be certainly true is that it wouldn't be any more efficient than any of the other species. It would take more than 100 eggs to produce an offspring, and there's a very good chance that offspring wouldn't survive." The foetus could die or, in the event of a birth, the child could have serious developmental abnormalities or birth defects, he said. "We still don't know how to reprogram these cells when we do a nuclear transfer," he said. "When we take a skin cell, we still don't know how to make it into an embryonic nucleus." Professor Trounson has long been on the record as being opposed to any attempts to introduce full human cloning. "I don't see any medical reason for it at all. There are social or personal things involved that have nothing to do with any medical condition," he says. In the case of Professors Antinori and Zavos, he said: "I think they're driving their own interests, and creating an international name for themselves on something that has no relationship to medicine. "It has a relationship to glory, fame ... I can't be anything but critical." *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists! <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. 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