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CNN Live Saturday

This Month Marks 25th Anniversary Of First Test-Tube Baby

Aired July 19, 2003 - 18:24   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


WHITFIELD: Well, any parent will tell you if you want to see how quickly times flies just watch the growth of a child. It was 25 years ago this month that the world's first test tube baby was born.
The birth of Louise Brown was considered astonishingly remarkable and controversial at the time. The world had watched and waited fearing that Brown might be genetically deformed but, instead, she was born perfectly normal.

Renewed fears now about other reproductive advances, many of the same arguments that were raised against using test tube technology for babies are being echoed even more loudly in the debate over cloning. Is that likely to change?

Joining us from Philadelphia to address the issue is Art Caplan. He's the director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, good to see you Art.

ART CAPLAN, BIOETHNICIST, UNIV. OF PENNSYLVANIA: Hey, how are you Fredricka?

WHITFIELD: I'm doing pretty good.

All right, well it was 25 years ago the concerns were that this baby couldn't possibly be born healthy and now are you finding that it is much more widely accepted if you're dealing with the fact that hundreds of thousands of babies are born every year now worldwide with test tube technology?

CAPLAN: It's hard to remember how controversial this was when it took place. People were arguing that it should not be done. It would be unsafe. It was dangerous to play with the fate of babies. And now, we look at the children and I almost want to say it's boring.

I asked my class the other day, you know, are you interested in knowing if someone is the product of a test tube baby birth and they all said no. You know it just doesn't have any of that kind of stigma that 25 years ago it absolutely did.

WHITFIELD: And, remarkably we're talking about 45,000 in vitro births in the U.S. alone.

CAPLAN: Yes.

WHITFIELD: Five hundred thousand worldwide. At the time, 25 years ago, certainly nobody thought it would take off the way it did. What happened? Was it the fact that Louise Brown was so healthy? Was that really the springboard for all of this?

CAPLAN: You know I'm going to say yes. When she came out healthy the one thing that had been done before Louise Brown there was a lot of work with animals and so people knew that the procedure had worked with animals. They had no problems with animals. They were doing test tube monkeys and test tube goats and this sort of thing.

But, when she showed up healthy, intact, looking great, kind of brought out before the media it kind of quieted the critics down. The critics had been saying it won't work. It's not safe and they also said it's unnatural and it's bizarre, and when you showed them the baby that kind of let the technology just take off.

WHITFIELD: OK, well let's talk about just a little bit specifically of what it really is removing a woman's egg, putting it in a petri dish, and then fertilizing it that way and then reinserting it back into the uterus of the woman. You said it.

You know people have described it as being very unnatural. It's even been described as cowboy science way back when. Do you see some of those very same descriptions being used for cloning and do you see cloning perhaps, human cloning, taking off eventually just like this has?

CAPLAN: Well, you know, I'm one of the people who called it cowboy science sometime ago but for a slightly different reason. The technique came on. It worked but we've never really regulated it very well so that you still find things like people selling eggs on the Internet and you find clinics that don't necessarily give you the honest answer about how well their success rates are.

If you look now at cloning it looks a lot like it did 25 years ago. You got kind of fringe people out there saying they're going to do it. They're going to try it. There aren't any rules.

We still don't have regulations in the United States or worldwide about human cloning, so in some ways we look at the technology. There's a lot of arguing and dispute but we haven't put in a kind of set of oversight or regulation either for test tube baby technology or for cloning so they're really looking very similar historically.

WHITFIELD: So, does it concern you that they're even being seriously, I guess, compared or there are some parallels being drawn?

CAPLAN: Well, I think there are some parallels but one crucial lesson from the test tube baby case for cloning today is make sure it works safely in animals. We don't have that in cloning. We've seen a lot of deformed animals.

Viewers will remember that Dolly the sheep died prematurely. She had a lot of health problems. That wasn't the case with IVF, so one important lesson is, I would think, no cloning of people, no argument that it should not be done until it can be done safely in animals and they did have that with Louise Brown 25 years ago.

WHITFIELD: But if perhaps Louise Brown was not born healthy certainly we'd be having a very different conversation about this wouldn't we?

CAPLAN: Oh, absolutely because premiere in all the ethical argument is safety. If you're going to harm someone who can't consent, a baby, I don't think anybody is going to be able to stand up and say that's a risk worth taking for cloning or anything else.

WHITFIELD: Art Caplan thanks for joining us.

CAPLAN: My pleasure.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired July 19, 2003 - 18:24   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
WHITFIELD: Well, any parent will tell you if you want to see how quickly times flies just watch the growth of a child. It was 25 years ago this month that the world's first test tube baby was born.
The birth of Louise Brown was considered astonishingly remarkable and controversial at the time. The world had watched and waited fearing that Brown might be genetically deformed but, instead, she was born perfectly normal.

Renewed fears now about other reproductive advances, many of the same arguments that were raised against using test tube technology for babies are being echoed even more loudly in the debate over cloning. Is that likely to change?

Joining us from Philadelphia to address the issue is Art Caplan. He's the director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, good to see you Art.

ART CAPLAN, BIOETHNICIST, UNIV. OF PENNSYLVANIA: Hey, how are you Fredricka?

WHITFIELD: I'm doing pretty good.

All right, well it was 25 years ago the concerns were that this baby couldn't possibly be born healthy and now are you finding that it is much more widely accepted if you're dealing with the fact that hundreds of thousands of babies are born every year now worldwide with test tube technology?

CAPLAN: It's hard to remember how controversial this was when it took place. People were arguing that it should not be done. It would be unsafe. It was dangerous to play with the fate of babies. And now, we look at the children and I almost want to say it's boring.

I asked my class the other day, you know, are you interested in knowing if someone is the product of a test tube baby birth and they all said no. You know it just doesn't have any of that kind of stigma that 25 years ago it absolutely did.

WHITFIELD: And, remarkably we're talking about 45,000 in vitro births in the U.S. alone.

CAPLAN: Yes.

WHITFIELD: Five hundred thousand worldwide. At the time, 25 years ago, certainly nobody thought it would take off the way it did. What happened? Was it the fact that Louise Brown was so healthy? Was that really the springboard for all of this?

CAPLAN: You know I'm going to say yes. When she came out healthy the one thing that had been done before Louise Brown there was a lot of work with animals and so people knew that the procedure had worked with animals. They had no problems with animals. They were doing test tube monkeys and test tube goats and this sort of thing.

But, when she showed up healthy, intact, looking great, kind of brought out before the media it kind of quieted the critics down. The critics had been saying it won't work. It's not safe and they also said it's unnatural and it's bizarre, and when you showed them the baby that kind of let the technology just take off.

WHITFIELD: OK, well let's talk about just a little bit specifically of what it really is removing a woman's egg, putting it in a petri dish, and then fertilizing it that way and then reinserting it back into the uterus of the woman. You said it.

You know people have described it as being very unnatural. It's even been described as cowboy science way back when. Do you see some of those very same descriptions being used for cloning and do you see cloning perhaps, human cloning, taking off eventually just like this has?

CAPLAN: Well, you know, I'm one of the people who called it cowboy science sometime ago but for a slightly different reason. The technique came on. It worked but we've never really regulated it very well so that you still find things like people selling eggs on the Internet and you find clinics that don't necessarily give you the honest answer about how well their success rates are.

If you look now at cloning it looks a lot like it did 25 years ago. You got kind of fringe people out there saying they're going to do it. They're going to try it. There aren't any rules.

We still don't have regulations in the United States or worldwide about human cloning, so in some ways we look at the technology. There's a lot of arguing and dispute but we haven't put in a kind of set of oversight or regulation either for test tube baby technology or for cloning so they're really looking very similar historically.

WHITFIELD: So, does it concern you that they're even being seriously, I guess, compared or there are some parallels being drawn?

CAPLAN: Well, I think there are some parallels but one crucial lesson from the test tube baby case for cloning today is make sure it works safely in animals. We don't have that in cloning. We've seen a lot of deformed animals.

Viewers will remember that Dolly the sheep died prematurely. She had a lot of health problems. That wasn't the case with IVF, so one important lesson is, I would think, no cloning of people, no argument that it should not be done until it can be done safely in animals and they did have that with Louise Brown 25 years ago.

WHITFIELD: But if perhaps Louise Brown was not born healthy certainly we'd be having a very different conversation about this wouldn't we?

CAPLAN: Oh, absolutely because premiere in all the ethical argument is safety. If you're going to harm someone who can't consent, a baby, I don't think anybody is going to be able to stand up and say that's a risk worth taking for cloning or anything else.

WHITFIELD: Art Caplan thanks for joining us.

CAPLAN: My pleasure.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com