On March 9th, life took a turn towards art as a band of controversial scientists gathered before a mob of journalists in Rome to launch a project to produce a human by cloning. The protagonists led by Severino Antinori, an Italian infertility specialist, Panos Zavos, an American researcher in the same area, and Avi Ben Abraham, an Israeli biotechnologist plan to start tinkering with cells in the laboratory by the end of this month and to have a human clone alive and kicking by 2003. The fiercest opponents of human cloning, many of whom have lobbied for a permanent ban on experiments, say it could lead to a dystopia like the one described in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World . Reproductive cloning, they argue, is an affront to human dignity and could have nasty results for the clone and for society. The ethical questions, and others, have been debated in an armful of books .
Many scientists say that our limited understanding of the procedure makes it dangerous.
Many oppose the whole notion of cloning humans as an affront to human dignity. Bioethicists are troubled by concerns for the clone s welfare, the viability of his or her family and the implications for wider society. Lawyers fret about the legality of such science, given regulations governing human cloning and embryo research in various countries. More surprisingly, strong arguments against the initiative come not just from those opposed to the principle of reproductive cloning, but also from researchers at the forefront of the technology. Veterans, such as Alan Trounson at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, have succeeded in cloning several species of mammal.