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US doctor claims to have implanted cloned human embryo
A US fertility specialist said he had implanted a cloned human embryo in a woman’s womb, reigniting controversy over attempts to create the world’s first cloned human.
The claims by Panayiotis Zavos were met with scepticism from the medical establishment and anger from politicians in Britain where the procedure, considered by many to be unethical and potentially dangerous, is illegal.
“We have implanted the first embryo two weeks ago,” Zavos told a news conference, but he cautioned that there was only a 30 percent chance that the unnamed 35-year-old woman would become pregnant.
“We are waiting for the results this weekend. We expect success but it could result in no pregnancy,” he said.
The fertility specialist gave few details and no proof of the operation which he claimed involved the same process British scientists used to produce Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, in 1997.
“I do not have a pregnancy to announce. Stand by for two or three weeks,” said Zavos who dropped the medical bombshell at a news conference in a central London hotel arranged to discuss an entirely separate cloning issue.
He said the process involving an embryo grown from skin cells from the woman’s husband, had been filmed, and added that he would allow DNA testing to check his claims at a later date.
Zavos refused to give details of the woman’s origin or the date of the implantation, but confirmed the process did not take place in Britain, the United States or Europe.
British Health Secretary John Reid rounded on the declared attempt to create the world’s first cloned human baby as a “gross misuse of genetic science”.
“It is illegal to clone a child in the UK. The government has already acted to stop this happening here,” Reid said.
“We are one of the few countries in the world who have passed legislation to ban this possibility,” he said, adding: “There will be no cloned babies in the UK while I am Secretary of State for Health.”
A spokesman for the Royal Society, Britain’s national science academy, said: “We remain extremely skeptical of the claims made” by Zavos.
“If and when he provides the evidence, I am sure scientists and doctors will look with interest.”
“What is more worrying is, without being sure of any substance to the claims, some infertile couples may have their hopes falsely raised, which is regrettable,” he said.
The spokesman also accused Zavos of seeking publicity, adding: “Scientific journals and conferences are the place to present your work — not at hugely theatrical press conferences.”
Wolff Reik, cloning expert at the Babraham Institute, Cambridge, said:”In every single experiment, 99 percent of clones die in the womb and the remaining one percent have problems.”
“Therefore it remains as irresponsible as before to do it in a human,” he said.
Reik’s comments were echoed by pressure group Life which said Zavos had exposed the woman “to almost incredible risk”.
The UN decided in November to postpone for two years a decision on human cloning with countries divided between those seeking a total ban and others prepared to accept research towards therapeutic ends.
Melatonin may help BP: study
Melatonin, a hormone known for helping to regulate the body’s internal clock, may help lower high blood pressure, Dutch and US researchers reported on Monday.
Supplements of the hormone, often used to help battle jet lag, reduced blood pressure in a small group of men who took them regularly, the researchers said.
“This finding might open the door for a new approach for treating hypertension,” said Frank Scheer, a neuroscientist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.
“It has been reported that people with high blood pressure often have suppressed nighttime melatonin levels,” Scheer added in a statement. “We have recently found that people with high blood pressure have actual anatomical disturbances of their biological clocks.”
Melatonin could offer a gentler approach, Scheer said. As a side benefit, he said the men reported sleeping better when they took melatonin.
It could be that sleeping better helps improve blood pressure, Scheer, said, although he stressed much more study is needed. He said no one with high blood pressure should start taking melatonin on his or her own.
Vitamins ward off Alzheimer’s
High daily doses of vitamins E and C taken together reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease among elderly people, a study said on Monday.
Taken in supplement form, and not in a lower-dose multivitamin, the vitamins’ anti-oxidant properties appear to offset the buildup of so-called free radicals that are believed to damage cells and lead to the debilitating brain disease.
Alzheimer’s gradually robs millions of people of their memories and ultimately of their mental faculties. Roughly 5 million Americans suffer from the disease, and the risks of developing it increase markedly with age.
The 4,740 participants in the five-year study were aged 65 or older when the study began in 1995.
Biggest solar power station
The world’s biggest solar power station will be connected to the German electricity grid at the end of July near the eastern city of Leipzig, the firms involved in the project revealed.
Made up of 33,500 solar panels, the station at Espenhain will be able to generate about five megawatts, enough electricity for 1,800 homes, the Shell Solar and GEOSOL companies said Monday.
“The solar power station will save some 3,700 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually,” they said in a press release issued from Hamburg. — Sci-tech World Report
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