Senior MP seeks new laws to stop human cloning

Urgent new laws are needed to curb scientists on the verge of creating human clones, a senior MP warned.

Labour MP Dr Ian Gibson said reforms of research into the cloning of human embryos are needed, or the government risks being caught out by scientific developments.

The Human Fertility and Embryology Authority (HFEA) met to discuss an application from a team in Newcastle. The scientists want to clone human embryos to harvest stem cells for research into cures for diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and diabetes. Meanwhile, American fertility doctor Panos Zavos plans to open offices in London to counsel couples. He claims to have created a cloned human embryo and implanted it in a woman's womb, although the experiment subsequently failed.

It is feared he will use his Tottenham Court Road premises as a "travel agent" to recruit couples to his clinic abroad. Dr Gibson, chairman of the Commons science and technology select committee, said: "People who live here will feel desperate enough and will use this avenue to get a child, and he will promise many things that I am sure will be unreliable."

Dr Simon Fishel, director of Care, a firm that provides most fertility treatment in the UK, said Dr Zavos' move was "parallel to the lowest form of peddling". Dr Fishel said even supporting human cloning should be banned.

At a conference in Berlin this month doctors are to outline the latest research on cloned human stem cells. Dr Gibson said: "There has to be better regulation. Someone will do it and it may eventually be successful. There was a religious group that claimed to have done it (cloned a baby) and we never trusted it, but Dr Zavos and others are a greater threat – they have got the expertise to carry it out."

Dr Zavos, and the team from Newcastle University headed by Dr Miodrag Stojkovic, will be summoned to give evidence to MPs on the science and technology committee next month. But the Newcastle group is keen to distance itself from Dr Zavos and says the aim of its work to grow stem cells is to cure disease.

Sources say the HFEA is likely to approve the Newcastle research, though not at present.

Panos Zavos, from Kentucky, is infamous for claiming to have created the first cloned human embryo. But he is not a doctor of medicine – he has a PhD in reproductive physiology. A Standard probe found he was:

– Sacked from a hospital after misappropriating patients' payments.

– Fined for health and safety breaches at his private clinic.

– Ordered to pay a former employee £300,000 for malicious prosecution.

Dr Zavos said last year he had implanted a cloned embryo in a woman's womb but the experiment failed.

© Evening Standard