Source: Reuters
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, January 27, 2001: An international group of reproductive experts plans to start a serious effort to clone humans to provide children to infertile couples, a U.S. scientist said. A viable embryo, probably using stem cells or other cells taken from the man, could be available for implantation in the woman’s uterus within 18 months, said Dr. Panayiotis Zavos of the Andrology Institute of America and the Kentucky Center for Reproductive Medicine and Invitro Fertilization in Lexington, Kentucky. Zavos noted, “This is going to be the first serious effort. As revolutionary as it may sound, as fictional as it may sound, it will be done. It’s a genie that is out of the bottle and will be controlled.” To create animal clones, scientists frequently made hundreds of failed attempts to develop viable embryos. Medical ethicists have posed the possibility of cruel failures in human cloning, where genetic abnormalities result in grotesque fetuses unable to survive outside the womb.