The uproar sparked by reports of the first human cloning pregnancy could help sway a crucial vote on cloning in the US, say biotechnology companies.
The Senate is currently debating legislation to ban all human cloning. But scientists want 鈥渢herapeutic cloning鈥� to be allowed. This involves the creation of early cloned embryos for the extraction of stem cells. These cells would be used to treat disease and the embryos would be destroyed after just a few weeks, meaning no cloned babies would be born.
As revealed by 快猫短视频 on 7 April, Antinori reportedly told a conference in the United Arab Emirates that a woman taking part in his human cloning programme is eight weeks鈥� pregnant. But he refused to reveal the woman鈥檚 nationality or location.
Advertisement
Antinori鈥檚 claims could strengthen calls for an outright US ban on therapeutic as well as reproductive cloning, says Simon Best, chief executive of UK-based Ardana Bioscience. Best was previously CEO of Roslin BioMed, which has a licence to the technology that led to the cloning of Dolly the sheep.
Antinori鈥檚 office continues to refuse to confirm or deny the reports of a pregnancy. But Giancarlo Calzolari, a science reporter on Il Tempo in Rome, claims Antinori told him on Friday it is real and that it was carried out in a Muslim country.
鈥淗e told me it was a clone of an important, wealthy personality,鈥� Calzolari said. 鈥淭he doctor added: 鈥業 have at my disposal whatever amount of money is needed to reach the result. Imagine, it has been possible to carry out in a Muslim country a kind of research that was impossible to do in the West.'鈥�
Scepticism and outrage
The only verified human clones to date were six-celled embryos, created by Advanced Cell Technology in Massachusetts, US, and detailed in a study published in November 2001.
Antinori鈥檚 colleague, Panos Zavos at the Andrology Institute of America in Lexington, Kentucky, had previously announced that the pair planned to clone a baby by the end of 2001. Earlier in April, Antinori told Scientific American he had created cloned human embryos of 20 cells.
But cloning scientists around the world have reacted with scepticism, as well as outrage, to Antinori鈥檚 claims.
A human pregnancy 鈥渟ounds extremely unlikely,鈥� said Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, where Dolly the sheep was cloned. 鈥淚n the past, he claimed that he cloned monkeys and there has never been any demonstration that that was true.鈥�
Many countries have banned reproductive cloning and most prominent scientists warn of the high risk of severe birth defects, as well as very high rates of miscarriage. The technology is also opposed by many on ethical grounds.
International law
However, therapeutic cloning is legal in many countries, including the UK. 快猫短视频s hope it could be used to generate stem cells tissue-matched to a patient, for treating diseases including Parkinson鈥檚 and diabetes.
Antinori鈥檚 claims threaten 鈥渁 growing success story in stem cell research,鈥� Best told the Financial Times. 鈥淚t won鈥檛 help in the Senate vote.鈥�
Richard Nicholson, editor of the UK-based Bulletin of Medical Ethics, says the report of the pregnancy strengthens the need for international legislation to ban reproductive cloning.