It was announced in an article in New Scientist that Severino Antinori, the Italian fertility specialist, has said that a woman in his cloning program is eight weeks pregnant with a human clone. He refuses to state her nationality or location. I believe that this is a credible announcement and only confirms what Antinori has claimed he will pursue. He also claims that he has over 5,000 couples in the program desiring to be cloned. This means that we can expect additional announcements in the near future of other cloned pregnancies. Although the announcement was made at a meeting in the United Arab Emirates, Antinori did not disclose where his work is being done.

I expect this announcement to be uniformly condemned by the scientific community. Most animal cloned embryos die in the womb and most that survive to birth are defective in some form or another and often die early. We can only expect the same result for this unfortunate human clone which is nothing more than a human experiment. This doesn't mean, however, that most scientists are ethically opposed to human reproductive cloning. They simply believe the health risks are too great at this time. If most of these risks are eventually overcome, most scientists will drop their opposition.

The scientific support for therapeutic cloning, which is cloning for the purpose of harvesting stem cells, dramatically illustrates that the scientific community judges these experiemnts on a purely cost/benefit ratio. Therapeutic cloning kills an embryo but for the greater good of hopefully curing disease. Reproductive cloning will maim and kill dozens of embryos, fetuses and children, and saves no one. Never mind that innocent human beings are sacrificed in either case. Part of the unacceptable cost of human reproductive cloning in the view of many scientists is the harm done to public opinion towards therapeutic cloning. So don't be too overcome with gratitude towards scientific spokesman who condemn Antinori. It is largely self-serving.

Dr. Ray Bohlin
Probe Ministries
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Also see the Gulf News report: http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/News.asp?ArticleID=46275

©2002 Probe Ministries.

About the Author

Raymond G. Bohlin is president of Probe Ministries. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois (B.S., zoology), North Texas State University (M.S., population genetics), and the University of Texas at Dallas (M.S., Ph.D., molecular biology). He is the co-author of the book The Natural Limits to Biological Change, served as general editor of Creation, Evolution and Modern Science, co-author of Basic Questions on Genetics, Stem Cell Research and Cloning (The BioBasics Series), and has published numerous journal articles. Dr. Bohlin was named a 1997-98 and 2000 Research Fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture.

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