A Chicago scientist is planning to clone a human being within the next two years and has assembled a team of doctors and childless couples for the experiment. The scientist, Dr Richard Seed, has a doctorate in physics and helped to pioneer the first successful transfer of a human embryo from one woman to another in the 1970s.
Dr Seed's decision is in defiance of the recommendation of a national bio-ethics commission last year that legislation should be passed banning such cloning. It was set up by President Clinton after a British scientist succeeded in cloning a sheep, the famous Dolly. The President also banned any federal funding for research in this area.
But Dr Seed is taking advantage of the loophole in US law which allows cloning of humans backed by private funding. Dr Seed has said that he has raised several hundred thousand dollars but needs $2 million to begin the cloning project.
He told the Washington Post that he has selected four couples from a pool of six that had volunteered to be cloned and said that his preparations were 90 per cent complete. He refused to name the doctors who have agreed to help him and said he would go to Mexico if prevented from doing his experiment in the US.
"I've said many times that you can't stop science," Dr Seed told National Public Radio. "God made man in his own image. God intended for man to become one with God . . . Cloning and the reprogramming of DNA is the first serious step to becoming one with God."
Several draft laws outlawing human cloning are before Congress but no legislative work has been done on them. The Food and Drug Administration has said that it has powers to regulate cloning but so far this has not been tested.
Medical specialists who have worked with Dr Seed say that he can be eccentric but has great technical expertise in his area. Dr Harith Hasson, chairman of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Chicago's Weiss Memorial Hospital, who has worked with Dr Seed, said: "He is a little crazy but we all have to be a little crazy to get to that level. And if anyone can make human cloning happen it would be someone like Richard Seed."
Dr Hasson also said he would be willing to work on the project with Dr Seed if he got approval from an ethics review board.
Ms Lori Andrews, professor of law and bio-ethics at Chicago-Kent College of Law, said that she would not be surprised if Dr Seed went through with his plan as "he has a history of applying animal reproductive techniques to humans".