Head to head: Human cloning

A group of leading UK scientists have appealed to the media to stop reporting claims of human cloning, saying "a flurry of publicity" around such stories causes "public anxiety".

This followed the claim last week by US fertility expert Dr Panos Zavos that he had transferred a cloned embryo into a woman's womb.

But journalists have defended their right to report such stories.

BBC News Online presents opinions from opposite sides of the debate.

---

Professor Colin Blakemore is chief executive of the Medical Research Council and is one of the scientists who signed the letter to editors:

Science has its own mechanisms for looking at unusual claims, judging them and assessing them - it's an evidence-based process.

This is an extremely dangerous process and I don't think anyone responsible should venture into it without better understanding of the practical problems 'Ban cowboy cloners' demand

Scientists publish and they talk about their results at conferences.

Other scientists look at their evidence, express their criticisms and their scepticism and, from an expert point of view, challenge the notion.

I think the reason scientists turn to the media for an alternative process says something about their confidence in being able to face that normal method of expert scrutiny.

They [maverick scientists] might well have succeeded [in producing a cloned embryo] - that's a real possibility.

There will be a time, I'm almost certain, when a cloned human baby is produced.

But this is an extremely dangerous process and I don't think anyone responsible should venture into it without better understanding of the practical problems.

The first question to ask, before you give them airtime, is have you put up your idea to the challenge of other scientists, have you passed through the normal process of peer review?

You notice that Dr Zavos chose to come to the media to make his announcement, not a scientific conference and not through a publication.

That tells you a lot about his confidence in his own results.

---

Jeremy Webb, editor of New Scientist, said the manner in which Dr Zavos' claim was released did not necessarily mean it was bad science:

I have great sympathy with what Prof Blakemore and his colleagues are trying to do but I do think it's misplaced.

A group of UK scientists say attempts to clone humans should be outlawed

This is a breakdown in communication between one scientist and his colleagues and I think it's up to scientists to try to persuade Dr Zavos to keep his counsel.

I don't think it's down to newspapers and magazines to do it for him.

I read two of the accounts in the Sunday papers and they were very responsible.

They said that Dr Zavos had no evidence and that most experts in the field were sceptical and I wonder what more we can do.

Newspapers are not stupid.

Dr Zavos was announcing the start of something and speculating abut what would happen in the future.

Lots and lots of good science is done that does not get published in academic journals Jeremy Webb

Those kinds of stories we cover all the time - we hear them and we read them every day.

But also, just because it hasn't been published in an academic journal doesn't mean it hasn't been done.

Lots and lots of good science is done that does not get published in academic journals.