Controversial fertility specialist Panos Zavos revealed plans to clone a dead baby. The American doctor, who has been attacked for publicity-seeking by British experts in the field, claims already to have carried out 3 experiments on tissues culled from dead human beings.
For an undisclosed fee from the parents, Zavos and his KY team inserted genetic material from a dead (died during surgery) 18-month-old child’s skin cells into a cow egg, where they continued to grow. The resulting embryos were then terminated. Tissues from a 33-year-old man and an 11 yr old girl named Katie (died in a traffic accident) were also used in the experiments. Cells from the man produced viable embryos that could have been implanted into a surrogate mother, had they been created using a human egg. Zavos in London: “This was not about creating a pregnancy, we are using cow eggs to refine our techniques. This is pure experimentation.” [http://www.thisislondon.com/news/articles/12889336?source=PA, M. Prigg, Evening Standard Science 31 Aug04]
