Washington

Three of a kind: Severino Antinori (left), Brigitte Boisselier and Panos Zavos. Credit: SHAWN THEW/GETTY IMAGES

The US National Academies has come under fire for inviting researchers who plan to clone human beings to a forum held in Washington on 7 August.

Severino Antinori, director of the International Associated Research Institute for Human Reproduction in Rome, and Panos Zavos, director of the Andrology Institute of America in Kentucky, used the meeting to announce plans to start cloning experiments in November. Television broadcasts subsequently led with the news in both the United States and Europe.

Also present was Brigitte Boisselier, scientific director of Clonaid, a company set up by the Raelian sect, which intends to clone humans.

“The academies should only have the best, most credible, and authoritative scientists to present data,” argues David Mangus, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Alan Trounson, deputy director of the Monash Institute of Reproduction and Development in Clayton, Australia, adds that media attention may help to “attract money and thereafter the skills to conduct this unfortunate experiment”.

Debbie Stine, an academies official, defended the invitation, saying that the speakers had scientific credentials and both sides should be represented. But other participants say the would-be cloners gave no details of what they are doing, and no real dialogue took place.

There is also concern that the tidal wave of media coverage blurred the distinction between therapeutic cloning — which many scientists support — and reproductive cloning.

The forum was part of a fact-finding process for an academy panel that will report to Congress next month. The House of Representatives has passed a bill that bans human cloning, and the Senate will soon consider similar legislation.