Doctor has cloned cells from dead baby

Controversial fertility specialist Panos Zavos today revealed plans to clone a dead baby.

The American doctor, who has been attacked for publicity seeking by British experts in the field, claims already to have carried out three experiments on tissues culled from dead human beings.

One involved a child of a one-and-a-half who had died during surgery.

For an undisclosed fee from the parents, Dr Zavos and his Kentucky team inserted genetic material from the child's skin cells into a cow egg, where they continued to grow. The resulting embryos were then terminated.

Tissues from a 33-year-old man, who died in unknown circumstances, and an 11 year old girl named Katie, who died in a traffic accident, were also used in the experiments.

Cells from the unnamed man produced viable embryos that could have been implanted into a surrogate mother, had they been created using a human egg, Dr Zavos said in London today.

"This was not about created a pregnancy, we are using cow eggs to refine our techniques. This is pure experimentation."