A group of researchers meeting in Rome vowed to proceed with its plan to
clone a human baby within a year. The announcement led to a backlash among
Italian politicians who wish to introduce legislation to ban human cloning in
Italy. Not to be undone, Panayiotis Zavos, a reproduction researcher
formerly with the University of Kentucky, and Italian fertility doctor Severino
Antinori, said that they would relocate to another undisclosed Mediterranean
country, which some speculate could be Israel.
Zavos claims that between 600 and 700 couples volunteered to participate in
the cloning process. “Interest has come from all over, from Japan to
Argentina, from Germany to Britain,” he told reporters. He also said that
his team was ready to start cloning in the next few weeks, principally to help
infertile couples bare children.
The prospect of human cloning raises highly controversial moral and
scientific issues. The possible consequences stagger the
imagination. In spite of assurance that the scientists know what they are
doing, the possibility of producing some sort of “Frankenstein monster” leaves
many opposed to the process. The destruction of “unsuitable embryos” alone
should raise a moral outcry.
