World News 14-10-2003 Ban On Three-Parent Baby `Cloning` who: Genetecist Dr James Grifo what: Reveals details of experiment to create baby from three genetic parents where: San Antonio when: Yesterday snippet: "An experimental fertility technique, tested on five women in China because it would be banned in the US and UK, was condemned yesterday as perilously close to procedures used in cloning and in any case unethical," says The Guardian. "One woman became pregnant with triplet embryos, one of which survived 29 weeks - the first human pregnancy using a cell nuclear transfer of the sort that produced the cloned sheep Dolly." "Experts at the Sun Yat-Sen university of medical science in Guangzhou treated a 34-year-old woman who had undergone two IVF cycles, which had failed because of problems with her eggs," says The Independent`s Maxine Frith. The children would have had three parents because the nucleus of the woman`s egg was implanted in a donor egg and then fertilised by the father`s sperm. "But after triplets formed in a woman`s womb, one foetus was aborted and two later miscarried." Details of the experiment "were presented yesterday at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine meeting in San Antonio, Texas," says The Telegraph. "Dr James Grifo, of New York University, who worked on animal tests of the technique, said the miscarriages were due to complications related to a multiple pregnancy." Meanwhile, The Sun reports that American fertility doctor Dr Panayiotis Zavos plans to create the first cloned baby within months. "He aims to charge £100,000 per tot as an `alternative` to IVF — and said he was only weeks from triggering the first such pregnancy." [... more]

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