Perverse fantasies about selection

"Person A introduce se. "

"Ja sam Muammar el Gada"fi."

"Person B introduce se. "

"Ja sam Muammar el Gada"fi."

"Person C, kako se Vi you call? "

"Muammar el Gada"fi."

This is what the quiskoteka will look like, without any possibility of distinguishing the Gaddafis from one another if the announced human cloning experiment takes place in November. According to the explanation of Severino Antinorio, the controversial Roman gynecologist who leads the thirty-member team of scientists, the goal of cloning is not to create a double, but to treat complete sterility, because only men who have no other way to become fathers will undergo it (allegedly, 650 interested couples are already ready).

However, the news that "man clones himself" is one of those that causes polemics on a global scale. The risks, side effects and ethical consequences of cloning bring with it questions fateful to the human species and too important for dull August days. For this reason, panic reigned in many institutions of the international community. After all, from therapeutic cloning (for the purpose of treating sterility) one can move almost imperceptibly to cloning for reproduction, and all this evokes perverse fantasies about the selection of the human species, the creation of doubles, immortality and everything in order, up to Hitler and Dr. Mengele.

Although it is legitimately feared that similar research has been going on secretly for years in some countries (such as Japan and South Korea), the general consensus is that human cloning is a leap into the dark for which there is no reason. Thus, the little Italian gynecologist found himself as Galileo against the Inquisition. In his homeland, he has long been criticized because a few years ago, with his therapy, a woman became a mother at the age of 62; as things stand, Antinori's latest venture will see him expelled from the Italian medical society, and possibly arrested.

PREPARATION DESPITE TO EVERYTHING: And while Antinori's team is preparing for the experiment, despite the opposition of the European Union, US President Bush and the Vatican, the entire medical world looks at them with concern and suspicion. During last week's conference in Washington, where he explained his intentions, Dr. Antinori experienced the greatest humiliation for a scientist: laughter. Leading English and American molecular biology doctors who have been working on animal cloning for years labeled him a charlatan and megalomaniac. On the same occasion, to the delight of all the world's media, Antinori replied to the Nobel Prize winners in his spaghetti-English that they were ordinary veterinarians, and called the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church (whose anathemas are the fiercest) medieval darkness and criminals.

Appalled by the intentions of Antinori and his collaborators, official Berlin and Paris asked the United Nations to adopt a convention that would ban reproductive cloning. At the moment, according to the European Convention on Biomedicine and the Document on Fundamental Rights of the European Union, there is a ban on creating human beings identical to existing ones. At the same time, an internal document of the European Union was published, the conclusion of which states that "if these unscrupulous types fulfill their goals, it will be a disaster." However, all these documents are not binding and currently only 23 countries (of which four from Europe: Italy, Spain, Germany and France) have clear laws that do not allow such experiments.

TOUR LAW: Preparations for human cloning are going smoothly because these laws will be circumvented by hosting scientists in an "unnamed Mediterranean country" (read - Gaddafi's Libya), or a ship anchored in international waters.

The cloning procedure itself will be identical to sheep cloning Dolly, and predicts that the nucleus is removed from the unfertilized female ovum (nuclei) and replace it with the nucleus of a male cell. With electrical stimulation, fusion takes place and a normal embryo begins to develop (in the laboratory). After that, and only if the embryo is healthy - claims Antinori, it will be returned to the woman's uterus.

Apart from the moral and ethical objections to this experiment, there are technical doubts because various animals (frogs, cows, sheep, pigs, mice and goats) have been cloned in a similar way, but the success rate was less than 1%, and with terrible anomalies. which scientists are unable to explain.

In the field of cloning human cells, the UK has gone the farthest thanks to a law that allowed research, but only to defeat diseases such as Parkinson's or Alzheimer's. Researchers from Edinburgh, who three years ago cloned the first mammal, a sheep Dolly, stated that there was a huge danger of Antinori creating deformed children and that "no sane scientist would even attempt that." Dr. Antinori and his American colleague of Cypriot origin Zavos simply explained to the frightened English and the wider world public that "the ultimate goal is not to create David Beckham or other athletes...", but to treat the sterility of those couples who have no other way to become parents. At the same time, they claim that "cloning human beings is easier than cloning animals", and estimate the success rate at 12 percent, noting that genetic deformations are possible, but the same risk is present in all other types of assisted reproduction.

"This is the last frontier of biogenetics, before which it is impossible to stop" - concluded Dr. Antinori.