Rebel scientist using tissue from dead children to attempt to clone them again for their bereaved parents
Life imitates art. Art imitates life. “Godsend“, a movie opening August 17th, starring Robert de Niro as a doctor who clones children for parents who have lost a child due to early accidents or other loss, has a real-life equivalent. Or so says the man in question – Doctor Panos Zavos.
Quoting from a news.scotsman.com article:
At a news conference in London yesterday, he claimed the achievement was a major step forward, paving the way to creating cloned babies from dead tissue.
One of the “donors” was an 11-year-old girl, Katy, killed in a car crash. Another was an 18-month-old boy who died after surgery, and the third a 33-year-old man thought to have died after a road accident. In each case relatives contacted Dr Zavos’s team at the Centre For Reproductive Medicine in Lexington, Kentucky.
I am intrigued by this because:
• it points to our continued lack of mechanisms for meaningful global discourse on these subjects;
• the “GodSend” film production company, our very own Lions Gate Films, set up a website which is set up to look like a functioning cloning institute in the U.S. Their 800-number is receiving several hundred calls PER DAY from people who are unhappy about the idea of the clinic and who are calling to complain;