Grave expectations

摘要

In november the world's first cloned baby could be born, if reports this week are to be believed. But cloning experts are horrified and say that even if the baby is healthy, the mother could be at a high risk of a rare invasive womb cancer. Once more, Severino Antinori, the maverick Italian fertility expert, is at the centre of a controversy with his colleague Panos Zavos of the Andrology Institute of America in Lexington, Massachusetts. The pair vowed to clone a baby by the end of 2001. Shock waves reverberated around the world last week at the report that one of Antinori's patients is pregnant with a clone. According to Gulf News, he told a meeting in the United Arab Emirates that "one woman among thousands of infertile couples in the programme is eight weeks pregnant".