Professor Severino Antinori making his sensational announcement in Rome at the weekend. Picture / Reuters

Professor Severino Antinori making his sensational announcement in Rome at the weekend. Picture / Reuters

The dream of creating life in the laboratory is near. Environment reporter ANNE BESTON looks at the issues.

What is really scary is not the prospect of human cloning - it is that some scientists speculate it may already have happened in secret.

In laboratories around the world, giant leaps are being made in human and animal cell research.

Yesterday it was reported that Australia has been home to secret cloning experiments for two years. Researchers implanted a cell containing human DNA into a pig in 1999 but terminated the embryo after it lived for 32 days.

The experiment was carried out by Melbourne company Stemcell Sciences, according to Sydney's Daily Telegraph.

Look at the scientific developments in the past five years alone:

* The world's first cloned animal, Dolly the sheep, was revealed to the world.

* Genetic modification of food has moved so fast that consumers were eating genetically engineered foods before a consensus on how they should be labelled was reached.

* In the past few months the human genome has been mapped.

But although scientists mapping the genome were happy to have their progress watched by the world, researchers into cloning may be a little shyer.

In 1997, when the Roslin Institute in Scotland produced Dolly, her creators waited a cautious seven months before revealing her.

What is this latest proposal for human cloning?


The human clone debate stepped up a gear this week when a consortium of Italian, American and Israeli scientists announced they aim to have a human cloned embryo ready for implantation into a woman's womb within two years.

Professor Severino Antinori, a fertility expert who has already helped a 62-year-old woman give birth, and his American colleague, Professor Panayiotis Zavos, say they have 600 to 700 childless couples registered to take part.

Their announcement at a Rome conference at the weekend caused pandemonium from world media. But the international medical and scientific community greeted the news with scepticism.

The safety of the technology that produced Dolly is considered too dubious to even think of using it for a human clone.