First Cloned Human Could be Created Soon

October 13, 2001—Nicosia, Italy: Scientists could create the first cloned human before the end of the year, a doctor working on the controversial project said on Friday. 

Dr. Panayiotis Zavos, who along with his Italian colleague Severino Antinori has triggered worldwide alarm with plans to create tailor-made offspring, said research was going faster than initially expected. The team has been banned from carrying out research in most European Union countries, but Zavos said that was not hindering progress. 

``It is going well enough so we may attempt the first production of embryos, cloned embryos in the very near future. That is, three or four months from now,'' Cypriot-born Zavos told Reuters in an interview on Friday. 

Human cloning could effectively create a replica of another living or dead person. 

Zavos, who said the ``genie was out of the bottle'' when researchers cloned the first mammal, Dolly the Sheep, insisted there was nothing sinister in the endeavor. He said he was not in the business of creating ''genetically-modified doppelgangers,'' but in helping infertile couples have a child. 

``We are not interested in cloning the bin Ladens of this world, the Michael Jacksons or the Michael Jordans of this world,'' the Kentucky-based fertility specialist added. ``We are not interested in the replica of dead people. We are interested in assisting a father who does not have the sperm to have a biological child of his own...in assisting couples to reproduce.'' 

Countries like France and Germany have appealed to the United Nations to get human cloning banned in an international treaty. Religious groups are also enraged at the doctors' attempts to play God. 

Zavos, whose partner, Dr. Antinori, hit the headlines by helping a woman of 62 have a child in 1994, dismissed suggestions they were only interested in cloning for its own sake. He said thousands of childless people from all over the world were helping in their research. 

Though regarded something of a maverick in the medical world, Zavos' medical accomplishments are a source of pride for many Cypriots. He emigrated to the United States more than 30 years ago but retains close family ties with the island. 

Zavos declined to say where the research was under way, but indicated it was in more than one country. 

He added that governments which had banned human clone tests were making a mistake in mixing politics with medical issues. ``They are trying to make a political decision for a procedure which is medically oriented. This is not a political decision, this is a medical decision that needs to be made by physicians and their patients and not by politicians.'' 

Zavos said the ban was not in any way hindering progress. ``We have options we are exercising, beyond Europe, of course. This is the world we are talking about, this is not Europe, this is not America.'' 

Zavos said countries which took a stand against cloning embryos could possibly end up at a disadvantage because the technology would inevitably catch up. 

``This is not an issue of morality, this is not an issue of being ethical or unethical, but rather assisting people to have children and that is the business we are in.''