CHR - Press Relations
Blog topic: Reproductive Cloning
For once, one has to give credit to the media for only giving relatively little attention to yet another member of our professional community, who isn’t making life easy for our specialty. After octuplets in California and the ridiculous claim of being able to produce “designer babies” with predetermined hair and eye colors by another California-based colleague, now comes Dr. Panayiotis Zavos, this time not out of California, but headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky, who prides himself of “having broken the ultimate taboo of having transferred cloned embryos into the human womb” (Connor S. The Independent, April 22 2009).
Those with some memory on the subject will recall that Dr. Zavos, already years ago, was amongst a small crowd of individuals claiming, despite very obvious ethical and scientific concerns, as well as outright legal prohibitions in most of the civilized world, active clinical pursuit of human cloning. He wasn’t alone! In those days Dr. Severino Antinori (Rome, Italy) claimed to colleagues (this writer included) to have established an ongoing pregnancy after human cloning. The only likely consequence of this colleague’s activities was not the birth of a child, but Italy’s Law 40 (see above). And who can forget the pronouncements of former French journalist Claude Vorilhon, now calling himself Rael, the leader of a religious sect, called Raelians, to have created the first human clone (CNN.com February 12, 2004).
Zavos received in his most recent media extravaganza support and encouragement from some mainstream media. How else can one describe that, quoting The Independent, Peter Williams, a distinguished documentary maker for the Discovery Channel, has been filming Zavos’ human cloning attempts, dating back to 2003. One wonders whether Williams and the Discovery Channel would also document other untested medical procedures if they were implemented outside of acceptable ethical standards and appropriate ethical reviews.
What makes Zavos’ claims unique is not necessarily the cloning of human embryos. It is the claim (apparently witnessed by Williams) to have transferred 11 cloned human embryos into human uteri. Others have made similar claims (see above), but have little credibility and no confirming witnesses ala Peter Williams. Zavos, however, really appears to have had the gall to do it! Ethically as well as scientifically this is clearly much worse than simply making it up!
Medicine’s primary sine-qua-non is to do no harm. Therefore, human research is in the civilized world closely guarded, requiring, at each step, a very careful assessment of risks to the individual versus benefits to society. Since researchers on a project are usually very interested parties, they are incapable of making such determinations and most countries have, therefore, established various formats of independent ethics board to review research before it is initiated.
Understanding where currently the limits lie in knowledge and our abilities of primate cloning, it seems inconceivable that an ethics board, anywhere in the world, would approve human experiments involving transfers of cloned human embryos into human uteri. The risks of such research activities, at current knowledge levels, are simply too high.
This is not a statement against reproductive cloning, per se. We fully recognize that one can raise many very valid arguments against the categorical ban of human reproductive cloning, currently practically unanimously supported by all professional organizations in the field, most governments and even the United Nations. Indeed, we, at least on theoretical grounds, are sympathetic to many of those arguments in favor of reproductive cloning. This, however, by no means suggests that human reproductive cloning should be attempted.
Zavos (and his enablers) are lucky that none of the allegedly cloned human embryos, allegedly transferred into four different women, have taken and led to pregnancy. Considering the high abnormality rate in offspring, observed in animal cloning experiments, any pregnancy could have ended in human disaster. The perfidy of not caring enough about such a possibility, considering how likely it may occur, is simply mind blowing, and warrants ethical and professional consequences.
The ASRM has announced an investigation of the circumstances surrounding the California octuplets. Similar investigations should be initiated when public activities by colleagues endanger the standing of the profession in society. Just as excesses by Italian colleagues gave rise to Law 40, we, otherwise, run the risk that arguments in favor of closer government regulation of assisted reproduction in the U.S. will become unstoppable if the profession is perceived unable to self regulate.
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