It had been one of those mornings when you awaken, smile in the blue sky, flick via the papers, and gently sink your head into your hands and weep.
Here’s what occurred. Yesterday afternoon, a London PR company called Markettiers4dc sent the Guardian a press release promoting a documentary due to air on the Discovery Channel tonight.
The programme being touted is called Human Cloning. In it, the press release gushed, we would go behind the scenes with “the hugely controversial fertility scientist, Dr Panayiotis Zavos, all through his continuing attempts to create the very first cloned human being.”
The release goes on:
Reporter Peter Williams MBE who thirty years in the past created a film concerning the world’s initial test-tube baby was offered unrestricted use of Dr Zavos’ function. The last time Zavos was in London in January 2004, he outraged the health-related establishment by announcing that he had already transferred a cloned human embryo in to the womb of an unnamed surrogate.
Later on in the release, we’re told how Zavos continues to be pressured to continue his work in a secret lab within the Middle East. That’s mainly simply because what he is trying to do is in many nations regarded as unethical, illegal or both.
Zavos has, the release ongoing, implanted 11 cloned embryos into 4 ladies, though none has gone on to produce a live birth. We’re not informed what did occur to them.
This is acquainted publicity-grabbing territory for Dr Zavos. In 2001, he teamed up using the controversial Italian embryologist Severino Antinori to announce they had ten women lined up who desired to have cloned embryos implanted. The 2 parted in acrimony a while later.
In 2004, Zavos said he had implanted a cloned embryo into a 35-year-old lady, so she could give birth to a clone of her husband. Because Zavos gave no details and had not printed the function, many researchers dismissed him as being a charlatan.
A few of Zavos’s patients have reportedly been informed that treatment would cost the same as IVF, only for your figure to rise to nearly 50,000 later on.
Zavos re-appeared in 2006, when he informed the Guardian he had transferred cloned embryos to five ladies, including 1 52-year-old Briton.
This type of history tends to make enormous alarm bells clang whenever you see the person’s name once more. And so back again to that press release. I sent a note back to the PR agency stating I needed a lot more info to judge whether or not Zavos had truly produced cloned embryos.
I acquired a reply from your company stating they would attempt and get some more credible evidence for your claims. None arrived. This early morning they sent me a video clip clip of some embryos filmed down a microscope. It’s not possible to inform if they’re cloned embryos.
The Impartial decided to splash the story on its front web page this early morning, and it will extremely most likely assist shift a couple of newspapers.
I do not think it had been wrong to cover the story. It is fascinating. What I despair of is the fact that the tale that emerged is purest, spoonfed PR. The Discovery Channel can’t be faulted for seeking publicity for its programme, but for the media to play along and existing it as credible and factual without something approaching sound proof is disappointing. It’s galling too that I am only succeeding in giving it much more attention now.
The media’s part in this can be a sideshow of course. The actual issue is that reproductive human cloning is not remotely secure with present day technology. For this cause, it’s unlawful in the United kingdom. A cloned child is likely to become miscarried, or be stillborn, or delivered with substantial birth defects.
When the technology powering check tube babies was introduced within the 1970s, study in animals had already shown the method was safe. Conversely, nearly each and every attempt to clone a new animal species continues to be marred with birth defects or worse. To attempt and clone people with present day rudimentary knowledge is reckless.
Within the documentary, Zavos claims to possess created cloned embryos of 3 lifeless people, including a 10-year-old woman known as Cady who died inside a car crash. The mother has, we’re told, expressed an curiosity in getting the kid cloned.
This is another automobile crash within the generating, albeit a psychological one. A cloned baby if it survives will probably be a really various individual to whoever donated the cells from which it had been created. Bringing a child up expecting it to be somebody it is not is a sure-fire disaster. It will look similar, however it won’t behave exactly the same way, regardless of its parents’ expectations.
We’ll no doubt be hearing much more from Zavos in the future. One thing I would like to see from him are the data of his failures. What happens to the embryos which are transferred? How many fail to implant? How many are miscarried later on? If any grow into foetuses, what abnormalities do they have?
If human cloning had been secure, the arguments against utilizing the technology in reproductive medicine would change rapidly and dramatically. Attempting it with present day imperfect technologies is merely exploiting those susceptible and desperate sufficient to spend for it.

