Outrage grows over Italian doctor's cloned baby claim

Italian medical figures reacted in shock and disgust last week to the announcement by controversial fertility expert Dr Severino Antinori, that the world's first cloned baby will be born within weeks.

"If it's true, it's horrible," said Bruno Dalapiccola, a geneticist. "People who do this type of thing don't have the right to be doctors. To have recourse to cloning to resolve the problem of a couple's sterility is shameful. These fake heroes add nothing to science."

The first cloned baby, he added, "will be a funfair freak, born because of the superficiality with which certain people use these advanced techniques, pushing them to the limit". Reaction within parliament was equally hostile. "It is lunacy," said Maria Burani, a deputy in Silvio Berlusconi's ruling Forza Italia party and president of the parliamentary commission on infancy. "Antinori speaks of contributing to the scientific and cultural progress of humanity – he's got a fine idea of progress." Dr Antinori, who entitled his memoirs My Impossible Children, shot to fame 10 years ago when he enabled a 62-year-old grandmother to bear a child. He broke nearly eight months of silence on Tuesday when he told a press conference that a woman pregnant with a cloned embryo was due to give birth in January.

But he confirmed his reputation as a tease, and increased suspicions of a publicity stunt, when he refused to give any more details.

In April this year he had said that a woman pregnant with the first cloned embryo was eight weeks pregnant. What became of that infant, which should by now have been born? No comment.