Human cloning efforts unveiled

Representatives of two international groups announced Tuesday at a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) meeting in Washington that they have launched human reproductive cloning programs. Brigitte Boisselier, director of Clonaid, a company associated with the Raelian religious movement, said that her group has implanted several cloned embryos in human surrogate mothers and performed tests on the embryos. Panos Zavos, director of the Andrology Institute of America and Severino Antinori, director of the International Associated Research Institute, said they are working together to clone babies for 200 infertile couples, and intend to implant the first human embryos as early as November.

Several scientists, including Rudolf Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute and MIT, said that animal experiments raise serious concerns about the safety of human cloning, including the possibility that cloned babies would have subtle genetic defects. Peter Mombaerts, head of the laboratory of developmental biology and neurogenetics at Rockefeller University, however, argued that while human cloning should not be attempted, Jaenisch has exaggerated the rate and extent of defects in cloned animals. ...