More clone claims

Dr Panayiotis Zavos has told a US Senate subcommittee that the birth of the world's first human clone baby could take place in 2003. He told the House Government Reform Committee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources that he has set up two cloning laboratories where he is seeking to find a way to use cloning to help infertile couples to have children.

Neither of the laboratories is in the United States, where Zavos, a fertility specialist, is usually based. Zavos claimed that one was in Europe and the other 'somewhere between Greece and India', and stated that he expects to produce a cloned child 'sometime next year'. More than once he told the committee that he had not yet cloned a human being, but said that he had 12 couples willing to use the technique and that his team was ready to proceed.

Zavos said that reproductive cloning is 'inevitable', adding 'the genie is out of the bottle and it keeps getting bigger every day'. He also reiterated his scepticism about the claims of his former colleague, Severino Antinori, who has said that three clone pregnancies are currently underway. But he did say that he was aware of 'several teams who are making a great deal of progress' and speculated that the first cloned baby was likely to come from China.

The US Senate is currently considering two cloning bills, one that would ban all forms of human cloning, and one that would allow cloning technology to be used in medical research but prohibit reproductive cloning. But Zavos called upon senators to allow formally regulated human reproductive cloning, saying 'if you are concerned about the risks of human cloning, the proper approach is to fund it and then institute regulations that will ensure that it is done properly with a minimum risk for the baby'.