U.S. Fertility Expert Announces Effort To Clone a Human

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 27, 2001 ; Page A03

An American fertility specialist yesterday said he and several medical colleagues from around the world will soon begin a concerted effort to clone a human being.

The announcement appears to mark the first time an American with training in reproductive science has stated an intention to clone a person -- a procedure that involves the creation of a genetic twin from a single cell of an adult.

Panos Zavos, a professor of reproductive physiology at the University of Kentucky and co-founder of a fertility clinic in Lexington, said in a telephone interview last night that he and a consortium led by controversial Italian fertility doctor Severino Antinori hoped to produce the world's first cloned baby within the next 12 to 24 months.

Antinori has a reputation as a renegade because of his many successful efforts to help post-menopausal women become pregnant, including at least one woman who gave birth in her sixties. Zavos is an andrologist and a member of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the nation's largest society of reproductive professionals.

Zavos talked about the pending effort at a meeting of fertility specialists in Lexington yesterday. He expanded on the announcement in an interview last night, saying human cloning is inevitable and it was preferable for it to happen in the open with qualified professionals.

He said the procedure would be offered only to infertile couples.

"We're curing something of a problem, rather than just letting someone duplicate their ego," he said. "We're not interested in cloning Michael Jordan."

Chicago area physicist Richard Seed made headlines in 1998 when he said he would clone a person, and a Canadian-based religious group recently said that it, too, was on the verge of cloning someone. There is no evidence that either announcement was more than a publicity stunt, and it was not immediately clear whether Zavos's claims were any more substantial.

He and his wife, Pette Zarmakoupis-Zavos, a medical doctor and board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist, founded their own fertility center about two years ago, the Kentucky Center for Reproductive Medicine and IVF. The center has never reported its fertility success rates to the federal clearinghouse that most established fertility centers report to on a voluntary basis.

Zavos also is founder and director of the Andrology Institute in Lexington, which focuses on male infertility and sells fertility products to other sites.

The plan to clone a human drew quick criticism. "It's unethical and it's medical cowboy behavior," said Michael R. Soules, a professor of reproductive endocrinology at the University of Washington School of Medicine and president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. "Forget the social and philosophical issues; we just don't know if it's medically safe. This is not medical practice; it's headline-grabbing."

Zavos said he recognized there are risks, including the possibility of miscarriages, birth defects or harm to mothers, but believed they can be overcome. "Tell me any invention that didn't have its failures first," he said.

Zavos said the cloning group included doctors and researchers from several countries, and it hoped to set up shop in an unnamed Mediterranean country.