Antinori shot to fame seven years ago helping post-menopausal grandmothers give birth using donor eggs. Later he pioneered the use of mice to incubate the sperm of men with poor fertility. He is clearly no ordinary scientist but a showman who thrives on controversy and pushing reproductive biology to the limits. And that of course is one reason why he's seen as being so dangerous. The other, paradoxically, is that his idea of using cloning to combat infertility is not as mad as it sounds.
Many people have a hard job seeing the point of reproductive cloning.
But this view is too simplistic. For some couples, cloning represents the only hope of having a child carrying their genes, and scientists like Antinori are probably right to say that much of our revulsion to cloning as a fertility treatment is irrational. In future we may want to change our minds and allow it in special circumstances. But only when the science is ready. And that's the real problem.