Attempts to clone humans were likelyto result in unacceptably high rates of abnormality, an Australianin-vitro fertilisation (IVF) expert said today.
"Given the abnormality rate for animals, the rate for humancloning would probably be unacceptably high for humans," thedirector of surgery at the Royal Womens' Hospital in Melbourne, Mr John McBain said.
"Looking at work in sheep, there were lots of early starts andrejects before success.
"I question the ethics of allowing that level of experimentalwork.
"The abnormality rate of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) is thesame as for a pregnancy in the bedroom ... we fear the abnormalityrate for cloning is unacceptably high."
The rate of failure during attempts to clone a normal sheepmeant that emulating that program with a human subject was almostcertain to fail anyway, he said.
"Technically, it is unlikely to work, given the large number ofexperiments which had to be conducted before a normal sheep wasproduced," he said.
"Human reproductive cloning is not ethically sustainable and thetechnology as it exists now is not sufficient to give a reasonablechance of success."
Italy's Professor Severino Antinori, who helped the world'soldest mother fall pregnant, is driving the effort to create thefirst human clone.
AFP