Wilmut said he could envision three reasons for cloning: to "treat infertility, buy back lost relatives, and copy a desired person."

He discussed the difficulties in developing a "normal" family and child development when cloning was involved.

"My judgement is it would not be in the interest of the child," Wilmut said. "I think it would generate unacceptable expectations in the parent as to how the child should be."

Wilmut said positive aspects of cloning could include creating pigs with organs more acceptable to human bodies for transplants and using sheep to study cystic fibrosis.

"Of course, you are setting out to make the sheep ill to study the disease," Wilmut said. "This is acceptable provided that the animal gets the same treatment a human [with the disease] would."

Parallel committees from Harvard and MIT began planning this event soon after finishing last year's alternative medicine conference, held at Harvard.

"It actually works very well to have both schools [Harvard and MIT] working in the conference with resources on both sides," said F. Edward Boas '99, the Harvard conference director.

The conference included four panels of speakers discussing medicine, cloning, business and predictions for the future. Four speakers were on each panel.

The conference was free to Harvard and MIT students and cost a small fee for other guests.

The conference was sponsored by Nature Genetics, Genomic Profiling Systems, Kaplan, Bristol-Myers Squibb, TAP Pharmaceuticals, MIT and Harvard.