I originally conducted this interview with the man known as the Father of Human Cloning, Dr. Panayiotis (Panos) Zavos, on November 16th, 2020, during Covid-19 lockdowns.
I am aware that the topic of human cloning has not been majorly discussed in the public sphere for about sixteen years. With the publishing of this interview, I am attempting to bring this interesting and controversial matter above-ground to be openly debated within the realms of science and technology ethics once again.
Provided below are Dr. Zavos’ credentials, followed by timestamped key points, quotes and statements I selected from the interview.
Professor Dr. Panayiotis (Panos) Zavos’ credentials:
- Chief of Andrology, Andrology Institute of America
- President, CEO, Fertility Technologies International USA
- Founder, The Zavos Organization
- President, Zavos Scientific
Company slogan: “People are Our Business, the World is Our Market”
According to Dr. Panayiotis (Panos) Zavos, as quoted in the timestamped excerpts from the interview below:
Timestamped key points, quotes and statements selected from the interview:
1:53: “I’m trying to prevent people from dying”.
2:53: “I have patients in Paris, France”.. “they’ll say, “Meet the man that made you””.
3:15: “When you’re able to put things together just like when you’re in the kitchen and you’re creating lasagna, spaghetti or pizzaria or something; I’m in a different kitchen when I’m creating Humans! And that is very, very exciting to me!”
When asked the question: “Would you like to explain briefly how human cloning began; how it started with animals first, then moved on to human trials?”
3:53: Dr. Zavos claims, “The best cloner that ever lived on this Earth, or ever in the universe is God!”
He then goes on to explain his opinion on God creating Adam, and then taking a side of Adam and creating Eve:
4:11: “So, by definition, taking a part of a human and creating another one: that is the definition of cloning.”
5:53: “God did it already. I’m doing God’s work!”
In regards to the cloning of Dolly (the sheep) which occurred over 30 years ago, on July 5th, 1996:
6:18: “If we can clone Dolly (the sheep) why can’t we, you know, clone the real Dolly?” ..that’s why they named Dolly the sheep after her!” “..I began to deliberate this; discuss this; with friends of mine. You know, people that have no testes; people that have no ovaries; people that have no uteri; people that have no means via which they can become parents, they can CLONE THEMSELVES and become parents and still have a biological child of their own. The only difference would be that that clone would only carry the genome of the person we get the DNA from; the cell from that we’re going to use for the somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT).“
7:19: “If I take your cell: You, Bobby; you’re going to have a son. It’s going to look exactly like you and it’s going to carry on your own genome, your own DNA. And more likely it’s going to obviously grow up to be like you; may not be doing the videoing you’re doing tonight. He could turn and to be a violinist.
But, um, the moral of the story is it’s going to be a lateral, or laterborn twin of Bobby! Meaning that it’s an identical twin of yours, but it’s born 40 years later”… “We’re creating an identical twin that’s born at a later stage in your life.“
Dr. Zavos explains the steps in cloning, using the technique known as Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT):
8:26: 1.) “Right here I have a cell which is an embryo. In actuality, it’s an egg, and I’m holding it with an embryo holder under the microscope.”
2.) “.. Then, I go in with the tip of an injection system and I take that embryo –that egg rather– and I remove the DNA from it. So, that egg becomes denucleated. In other words, it doesn’t carry the DNA that the Mother puts into that egg.”
3.) “.. Then, I take one of your cells and I culture it, and I prepare it to become such a small cell that can carry your DNA, and I use the same instrumentation and I introduce it into that egg, ok? That is called nuclear transfer.”
9:19: “So, we take the cell that contains YOUR DNA and we put it into that egg that has NO DNA because we denucleated it–we removed the DNA from it. And so, we make it just an egg without the “egg yolk” so to speak. And then, we obviously run that egg that received that DNA through a whole array of things that we activate it chemically, electrically and otherwise, and by this activation process, then, the egg which is denucleated (the “egg white” so to speak); and the cell that carries your DNA fuse together”…“and so they become a new embryo now.”
10:44: “This is asexual reproduction. Which means we’re taking your DNA”…“and we can create an identical twin by doing what I just described.”
As of the date of the interview (2020) the topic of human cloning has been quite “hush hush”. There hasn’t been much news or coverage on the topic. Dr. Zavos is then asked: 1.) Are there are any countries where human cloning is legal; 2.) Have there have been any breakthroughs?
11:26: “There are some politics involved here, but I’m not going to get into that. When we announced to the world that we’re going to clone the first human obviously the world became a hotspot. I could be one day in Rome, Italy, and then the next day I could be in Lebanon, and the next day in Egypt, and the next day in Jerusalem, and the next day in New Dehli, and Saudi Arabia, New York City, and Washington D.C.. You name it! I’ve been everywhere.“
12:05: “The first that we needed to do actually was to break a lot of ice. In other words, we had to educate the world: What is this?! What is it for? Who’s it going to help, and who’s it going to harm?“
13:14: “Then, of course, we began creating embryos. That was towards the latter part of 2007-2008. And that’s when the world really got nervous–because I announced in London that we created the first cloned embryo. And then, after the press conference I had in London, I announced I transferred that embryo into a woman. Actually, I transferred five human embryos in four women. And that really put the screws in a lot of people to say, “Maybe you ought to arrest this guy.“
14:20: “At one time I spoke to Mr. Kerzov, the President of Israel for an hour and a half. And another time I was visiting an IVF program in Beirut (Lebanon), and Mr. Fadlallah, the leader of Hezbollah, invited me to visit with him. Now, as you realize, when you talk to the leader of Israel and to the leader of Hezbollah – those are two colliding forces in the Middle East. And that created an even bigger discussion about what’s going on here; and why’re you getting involved with the greatest enemy on Earth that Israel has, or America has”…”In other words, it became political.“
15:16: “We needed to improve the technology. We improved the technology to the level where if we try to do embryos via Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT): if you give me ten eggs now I can create five good embryos to transfer.“
“Before, it wasn’t the case”…”in the case of Dolly, they created 232 embryos, and then transferred them in 23 female sheep and they got Dolly. So, the success-rate was very low! That’s when they began to throw things at me and say, “You couldn’t create so may embryos; they’re all going to be abnormal; they’re all going to have problems, and etc., etc.” But, the debate I was participating in is: We are humans. We don’t behave like sheep; we don’t behave like animals, and we don’t treat humans like animals.“
Trust me! We’ve been doing IVF”…”since 1978, when Louise Brown was born in England; and we’re talking about 20-25 years later that we’re creating a clone using almost similar IVT technology. The only thing that we’re doing different is instead of putting the sperm into the egg, we’re putting a somatic cell into a denucleated egg. Other than that all the other steps are the same. So, we had a great deal of experience in the human that in the animal world they did not have. And so, the moral of the story is that we overcame some of those difficulties.“
“We became silent for a few years. I can announce to the world now that I have six blastocysts! Healthy blastocysts – created from Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer. That’s the most advanced embryo you can create via IVF or Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer – and, they’re ready to implant! Now, we were almost ready to transfer them until Covid hit. And right now we’ve put everything in suspension because I can not travel; I have not left the country now since January 29, 2020, and we didn’t think that Covid and cloning should go together. So, we said time out, we’re waiting for things to open. Standing by!“
When asked if he was familiar with any artificial womb technologies which can be utilized for growing cloned embryos, Dr. Zavos admits:
18:48: “I don’t understand, however, why we should create an artificial womb, where most of the parents of the cloned embryos that I create… they want them in their wives!“
When asked the question of if there are any countries where cloning is legal or unregulated, Dr. Zavos admits:
24:29: “There’re 138 countries in this world; more than half of them allow cloning. They would welcome me to clone a human being in their countries. And, when I tell people how easy it is for me to do it anywhere I go… because, I need the size of your kitchen to clone a human being!”…”all I need is a little ten-by-ten square meters kind of area, with my incubators, and my microscopes and whatever, and the rest of it is history.“
When asked what the most difficult process in human cloning is, Dr. Zavos claims the initial process of Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer: Being able to transform that egg to receive a cell from a donor who wants to become their clone’s parent; to be recognized and fuse, and create an embryo.
31:01: “Once you create that embryo you can not tell it apart from an IVF embryo – unless you fingerprint it; you do DNA screening. Because that embryo will resemble exactly like an IVF embryo. Nothing different whatsoever! It’s going to have a cell that will be dividing and creating advanced stages of an embryo to get down to the blastocyst stage; hatch; implant into the woman’s uterus, and then become a baby nine months later, thereafter.“
When speaking on FDA regulation, Dr. Zavos says:
37:40: “We’re very careful about what we do, because simply, you may not have to pay today, but you may pay even five years later. They’ll come and say “Ah, we found this note here; we found this document here, and you know what? That goes against the grain, and we need to do something about it”.
39:33: “…this is something that is welcome in some cultures. And, if you think that it’s against your beliefs –or somebodies beliefs– and they don’t like that: It’s not for them! It’s only for people that need it, want it, and incidentally, my…” “philosophy, and the way that we would clone somebody, is that we would only help somebody that exhausted all possibilities of reproductive medicine, including IVF, etc. That would be the only option that they have, and then we’ll help them become biological parents of a child via Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer.”
40:17: “As I announced to the Congress of the United States back when I testified is: ‘We’re not interested in cloning the Michael Jordans and the Michael Jacksons in this world.’ We’re only interested in helping infertile couples become parents.“
When asked, “For a cloned human being, created via Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer, would there be any problems issuing a Birth Certificate for that individual?“, Dr. Zavos responds:
40:45: “To my knowledge there wouldn’t be any. Because simply: the agency that issues that Birth Certificate would never know that that child is via Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer.“
When asked, “Are you and your team ready for Covid-19 to get over so you can progress human cloning techniques and technologies?”, Dr. Zavos states:
41:28: “Our team is ready to go to work after Covid is over. We have the team. We have the knowhow. We have the ‘kitchen’, and we know how to ‘cook’.”
When asked, “So where are you going to go to conduct this cloning?, Dr. Zavos says:
41:43: “It’s definitely going to be outside the United States, and outside the European Union.”
With the statements and comments made by Dr. Zavos, do you believe he is actively cloning human beings?
