Antinori Clones a Claim

Posted by Pete Shanks March 4, 2009
Biopolitical Times

The controversial Italian fertility specialist Severino Antinori just claimed to have cloned three humans nine years ago.

So, born in early 2000? That's strange. Let's go to the archive:

  • In January 2001, he was predicting that he would make a clone "within the next year or so."
  • In April 2002, he asserted that one woman was pregnant, and later that three were, though his former partner said Antinori had "no clones, no laboratory and no doctors to help him."
  • In June 2002, he said there had been no birth but there were five pregnancies.
  • In December 2002, he said that the first clone would be born in Belgrade in January 2003.
  • In July 2003, he said he had a "photograph of the five-month-old cloned foetus" which would be published "shortly in a medical journal."

That's when many of us stopped following his publicity campaigns. This latest "bombshell" was translated and distributed by AFP, so it has been fairly widely reprinted, but without much comment so far. On the bright side, Antinori has given us a new euphemism for cloning (aka nuclear transfer, SCNT etc.): "genetic reprogramming" or, in the original Italian, "ricodificazione genetica."

Previously on Biopolitical Times: