ROME, April 5: Italy’s Medical Association is considering disciplinary action against fertility specialist Severino Antinori amid reports that one of his patients is eight weeks pregnant with a clone.

“One woman among thousands of infertile couples in the (cloning) programme is eight weeks pregnant,” Antinori was quoted as saying at a meeting in the United Arab Emirates.

The news was reported by the online edition of Britain’s New Scientist magazine. If confirmed, it would represent the first human cloning pregnancy, New Scientist wrote.

The practice has been banned in many countries, including Italy and the United States, amid experts’ warnings of the high risk of still births and severe birth defects in any babies born alive.

Last August, Antinori and Dr Panos Zavos, a former University of Kentucky researcher, said they planned to transfer DNA from the nuclei of living cells into human eggs to create a human embryo, which would then be implanted into a woman’s uterus.

Their announcement drew worldwide criticism. Friday’s report caused an immediate uproar in Italy.

Experiments on sheep, mice and other mammals have suffered high rates of embryo loss and early death.

Antinori’s office in Rome declined to comment on Friday’s reports but Richard Gardner, a British expert on therapeutic cloning, told New Scientist the pregnancy would be “grossly irresponsible given the current state of knowledge, even aside from any ethical issues”.—dpa