Glasgow, July 22: Six couples trying to become the parents of the first clones will be flown to an unnamed developing country by a leading fertility expert before the end of the year, a Scottish weekly said on Sunday. of the six couples, Americans Bill and Kathy -- who did not want to reveal their surname -- told 'The Sunday Herald' that the experiment will be led by American fertility expert Panos Zavos.
"We want children so badly and we have tried so hard and for so long. No one has tried as hard as Kathy has to have children," Bill, a high school teacher in his fifties, told the paper.

Kathy, a sales representative in her mid-40s, spent a total of 24 months on IVF treatments and for 17 months of this time she was taking injectable drugs, the paper said.


The couple would also be considered too old to adopt in the US, the weekly said.


"We do not know where it is going to be or when, but it's imminent," Kathy told the weekly.

The couple attended the Andrology Institute of America, a fertility clinic run by Zavos in the southern US city of Kentucky, and were selected for the process, the paper said.

In Kathy and Bill's case, the child produced would be a clone of the mother and would be made up almost entirely of Kathy's DNA, the weekly said.

Some of the couples have requested a baby boy, in which case a clone of the father will be made by taking the nucleus from one of his cells, it added.


"This is a typical couple. They want their own children,' Zavos told the paper.


He was originally working on a joint cloning bid with the Italian Severino Antinori, but the two doctors fell out over unsubstantiated claims by Antinori of his cloning success.

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In April the Rome-based doctor told a Gulf News journalist at a genetics conference in Abu Dhabi that a woman on his programme was eight weeks pregnant with a cloned embryo.

Antinori later refused to confirm whether or not this is the case. Bureau Report