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American Morning
Congress Debates Human Cloning
Aired March 28, 2001 - 11:07 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.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: The hot ethical debate over cloning is back on the table. A congressional committee gets into that fray this afternoon. It is going to hear from a fertility specialist, the leader of a UFO-related group, and a host of scientists and ethicists. CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is here with us now for a preview of what should be a very interesting day before Congress.
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wild and wooly. Absolutely. Absolutely. They wouldn't have seen anything like this.
The two groups that Daryn referred to -- and that would be the fertility specialist and the so-called UFO group -- say that are poised to clone a human being. The UFO group -- and I will explain them in a minute -- say that by the end of next month they plan on having an embryo made that is a clone of another human being. And they say they have 50 women, surrogate mothers, ready to be implanted with embryo and carry it to term.
Now this group is called the Raelians. They call themselves a religion. They believe that we were all descended from aliens. And even though it may sound a little bit wacky, they are being taken pretty seriously, or seriously enough for subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives to ask them to come in and testify about what they are doing.
Now, all of this has ethicists fuming. They say that all the studies with veterinarians have shown that when veterinarians have tried to clone cows or sheep or other animals it really hasn't worked very well. Most of the pregnancies have ended in miscarriage. And the ones that haven't ended in miscarriage, only one out of four end up looking normal. The other ones have terrible defects -- heart, lung, blood vessels, all sorts of things.
And even if they are born OK -- that one out of four -- the veterinarians say that later in life very strange things happen to them. For example, we'll take a look at pair of mice. And the skinny mouse on the left is a normal mouse. The big one is a clone. Now, the big one used to look like the little one. And then all of a sudden at some point after puberty, he just became this obese mouse. And nobody knows why that happened.
Now, ethicists say and veterinarians say this is crazy to try this on humans. They say producing a defective obese mouse or sheep or cow is one thing, doing it in humans is quite another. We interviewed a doctor from Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is going to be presenting to Congress today tell them what he thinks about cloning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUDOLPH JAENISCH, MIT BIOLOGIST: One essentially uses humans as guinea pigs. One shouldn't do this at a stage when we don't know the basic biology behind the failures of clones.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COHEN: But cloning advocates say that they really have their science down. And they say not to worry, that it will turn out OK.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PANAVIOTIS ZAVOS, CLONING ADVOCATE: Trust me. The high risks will be taken care of because we know what we are doing. That's what we need to do. And we emphasize that we are very much aware of that, and we're going to develop the proper criteria.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COHEN: And so that's expected to be the debate today on Capitol Hill in less than an hour. Is it ethical to start medical experiments in humans when some people feel you haven't gotten it down right with animals?
KAGAN: Yeah, we've been hearing so much over the last week or so about all the things that can go wrong with animals. What about, though, Dolly the sheep? She seems to be doing fine.
COHEN: She's a success story. She's the poster sheep for cloning. She just celebrated her fourth birthday. And she appears to be doing fine. There she is bleating away. But one of the veterinarians that we talked to said, "You know, Dolly looks normal. But on the other hand, we don't know much about Dolly's mentality capabilities because there's no good standardized testing for sheep. And so her brain could be completely abnormal, and we wouldn't know it."
So in the case of a human, it might look OK. But then once it goes to school, you might find that you've got this bizarre creature your hands.
KAGAN: You don't know. And, of course, the other point about Dolly is how many attempts it took just to get Dolly.
COHEN: Exactly.
KAGAN: How much had to go wrong in order for that to go right?
COHEN: Right.
KAGAN: So, as Congress goes ahead and listens to this testimony today, I imagine they're thinking about what kind of laws could be on books, or what kind of laws are already on the books to talk about and regulate this?
COHEN: Right. Well, four states have banned cloning. And that would be California, Rhode Island, Michigan and Louisiana. And they've banned it.
But in other states, you can try to clone a human being. The federal government has banned federal funds from being spent on cloning. But if you can get enough money -- and this group the Raelians have private resources, as dose the other group, the fertility specialists -- you can go on ahead and try it.
KAGAN: It will be very interesting to see what the groups have to say today in front of Congress. Elizabeth Cohen, thank you so much.
And that House committee hearing on human cloning will begin at noon Eastern. Our medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen will be back then.
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