News	THE ECOLOGIST The Pandora's box of human cloning	16/05/2001
	"Antinori is widely-tipped to become the first person in history to clone a human being. Not for research, not for medicine, not even for science: for happiness. 'I think it is a human right to have babies,' he declared, simply, in a recent interview. And in pursuit of that right, Antinori is about to open the Pandora's box of human cloning, with all the potential nightmares it contains."

This article first appeared in April 2001 issue of The Ecologist Vol 31 No 3. www.theecologist.org

Professor Severino Antinori likes to help. He's that kind of man. The combative, moustachioed Italian is widely recognised as one of the world's leading experts on human fertility. He has made a lot of childless couples very happy; and that, he says, makes him happy too. His life's mission is to cure the world of the curse of infertility. 'To make an unhappy couple happy', he says, he is prepared to go a long way.
How far? Well, Antinori is widely-tipped to become the first person in history to clone a human being. Not for research, not for medicine, not even for science: for happiness. 'I think it is a human right to have babies,' he declared, simply, in a recent interview. And in pursuit of that right, Antinori is about to open the Pandora's box of human cloning, with all the potential nightmares it contains.
If ever there was a living example of the stark difference between knowledge and wisdom, it inhabits the skin of the 55-year-old Antinori. One of the world's leading fertility scientists, he also appears to be a man who recognises few, if any, moral or ethical dimensions to the work he does. As far as Antinori is concerned, the only limit to the advance of science is science itself. Everything else is just bunk. That, you may say, is what they told us about nuclear weapons. But if you're not a scientist, then you wouldn't understand, would you?
Antinori is director of the Rome-based International Associated Research Institute for Human Reproduction Infertility Unit (Raprui). He sits on too many 'international advisory boards' to mention, and he has become a bit of a TV personality in Italy and elsewhere, with his forthright and uncomplicated views about children, ethics, fertility and the wonders of modern science. Now, with his cloning plan, he is fast gaining international notoriety.
Not that this is the first time Antinori has hit the headlines for pushing the boundaries of science. His name first came to public attention seven years ago, when he used the latest advances in fertility to give the 'gift' of pregnancy to a 64-year-old Italian woman, whose name entered the record books as the world's oldest mother. Then, last year, he announced, usefully, that he had successfully matured the sperm of infertile men in the testicles of rats.
Now, he is counting down to breaking what may be the last fertility taboo of all. He has announced that, along with a small team of fellow 'experts', he will be cloning the first human being later this year, hoping to provide a child to an infertile couple for whom all other means have failed. He has already collected 10 couples who are prepared to be a part of the experiment, and is looking for more. In a final twist, the operation will be carried out in an 'unnamed Mediterranean country', to avoid the controversy which would otherwise inevitably dog this leap into the scientific unknown.
Antinori's announcement caused horrified reactions across the board. The Vatican (just up the road from Antinori's Rome office) announced strong disapproval. 'A child', it believes, 'is not an object to which one has a right… an object of ownership.'
But it's not just moralists, ethicists and the religious establishment who are bothered about Antinori's work. Fellow doctors and scientists are condemning him too. Dr Robert Lanza, an American fertility expert, calls human cloning 'unsafe and unethical'. Rudolph Jaenisch, an MIT scientist, says Antinori is being 'very irresponsible'.
What does Antinori say to such critics? Astonishingly, he has been publicly quoted as saying that creating a direct copy of a human being is 'a purely medical decision, not a matter for ethical assessment'. So that's all right then.
The German magazine Der Spiegel decided to put the public concerns to him in a revealing interview in February. Isn't cloning a dangerous process? Doesn't it lead to increased risks of disease, for example? Those who ask such questions are 'enemies of science', replied the doctor. What did Antinori, who claims to be a Catholic, think of the Vatican's stance? 'The Pope welcomed me last November,' said Antinori grandly, then hedged his bets by pointing out that, in any case, the Vatican 'carries one million dead on its shoulders' for opposing 'effective medicine'.
But if he was so confident, he was asked, why did he need to carry out his work in a secret location? Was the country he was planning to clone in even democratic? 'These are dangerous questions,' he scolded.
The magazine then asked Antinori whether cloning wasn't, in fact, a scientific dead-end anyway. After all, it pointed out, what he was actually doing was creating a direct copy of one of the partners (in every case, the man!) rather than a new child. Antinori claims it is a human right to have children. Perhaps, suggested the interviewer, it is also a human right to have a unique genetic identity? 'This,' declared the doctor, dismissively, 'is too theoretical.'
In such hands, it seems, rests the future of science, and perhaps even the future shape of the human race.