A report in The Independent in London on Wednesday says a controversial fertility doctor has claimed that he has cloned 14 human embryos and transferred 11 of them into the wombs of four women who had been prepared to give birth to cloned babies. However none of the embryos led to a viable pregnancy.The paper said an independent documentary film-maker recorded the cloning and confirmed to the paper that it had taken place and that "the women were genuinely hoping to become pregnant with the first cloned embryos specifically created for the purposes of human reproduction".
Cloning animals is an established scientific fact, with scientists in England making the first breakthrough with Dolly the sheep in 1996. Since that event, there has been a never-ending debate on the ethics of cloning humans and for the most part scientists have shied away from doing it, although in principle it is possible.
The procedure is a criminal offence in Britain and several other countries. However Dr Panayiotis Zavos would likely escape prosecution because he claims that he carried out the work at a secret lab. The Independent is speculating that it could have been in the Middle East where there is no cloning ban.
Dr Zavos is a naturalized American who owns fertility clinics in Kentucky and Cyprus, where he was born. The paper said his patients – three married couples and a single woman – came from Britain, the United States and an unspecified country in the Middle East.
Dr Zavos isn't worried that the cloning experiment didn't lead to a pregnancy since his work is in the early stages. He is determined to continue his attempts at producing a baby cloned from the skin cells of its "parent".
He told the paper, "There is absolutely no doubt about it, and I may not be the one that does it, but the cloned child is coming. There is absolutely no way that it will not happen.
"If we intensify our efforts we can have a cloned baby within a year or two, but I don't know whether we can intensify our efforts to that extent. We're not really under pressure to deliver a cloned baby to this world.
"What we are under pressure to do is to deliver a cloned baby that is a healthy one," he said.
Commenting on the ethics of doing the procedure, Dr Zavos told the paper the criteria should be whether human reproductive cloning is the only option available to couples after they have exhausted everything else.
"We are not interested in cloning the Michael Jordans and the Michael Jacksons of this world. The rich and the famous don't participate in this," Dr Zavos said.
The Independent noted that it took 277 attempts to create Dolly but since then the cloning procedure in animals has been refined and it has now become more efficient, although most experts in the field believe that it is still too dangerous to be allowed as a form of human fertility treatment.
Dr Zavos told the paper there's no need for these fears, saying that many of the problems related to animal cloning – such as congenital defects and oversized offspring – have been minimised.
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