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American Morning

Stem Cell Debate Rages On

Aired August 03, 2001 - 10:10   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.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: One other item that is on President Bush's radar screen is actually going to be causing quite a bit of debate, as it has in recent days, is the debate over stem cell research. It's now cutting into what the group, a group that calls itself anti-abortion. But can a person be anti-abortion and still support embryonic stem cell research? Well, that depends on who you ask.

And we're going to ask Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right To Life Committee, who joins us in our Washington bureau, and Michael West, who is chief executive of Advanced Cell Technology. That's a private company that is right now developing human cloning for research.

Let me begin with you, Mr. West. You say that the pro-life movement, as it calls itself, has actually waded into the stem cell debate. You don't think it belongs there?

MICHAEL WEST, ADVANCED CELL TECHNOLOGY: Well, this, no. I don't think this is an issue about abortion at all. It's an issue about the uses of cloning technology, not to clone a human being, but to use this biological miracle we call nuclear transfer to help people who are sick. It's about the medical uses of cloning. And I don't believe that it impacts upon the abortion debate at all.

HARRIS: OK, then, Mr. Johnson, then how do you see it so differently than Mr. West does? And I should say that you both consider ourselves to be anti-abortion, correct?

WEST: That's right.

DOUGLAS JOHNSON, NATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE: Well, the National Right To Life Committee is certainly against abortion and the reason that most people are against abortion is because it takes the life of an unborn member of the human family.

Now, it is important to realize that Mr. West is the head of Advanced Cell Technology, which has announced that it is getting very close to beginning to produce cloned human embryos and these human embryos would be produced for the sole purpose of destroying them in medical research.

Now that, Mr. West has admitted that these are human embryos and has passed testimony before Congress and so forth. We do not think it is a pro-life position to create human embryos for the purpose of destroying them.

HARRIS: Well, Mr. West, how about that? Is creating a human embryo the same as destroying -- and destroying it for testing purposes the same as creating and destroying a human being?

WEST: Well, you know, this is a complex debate, number one. I admit that. It's hard to encapsulate in just a few minutes of discussion such as we're having here. But to try to do so, I would point to the fact that we need to appreciate that our bodies are built of billions, or trillions, rather, of living cells. They are life. And so part of the confusion we're hearing is when we say it's human cellular life in a dish. Of course it's human cellular life. You know, you pluck a hair from your head, it has living cells. These are cells from the human species. But it's not a human being.

And it's well established in science and medicine that the types of cells we're talking about are human cellular life, but they're not an individualized human life. And this is central to the debate.

JOHNSON: These are, in fact, individual human embryos which, if implanted in a woman's womb, presumably would be carried to term and be a born person like any other, just like Dolly is a sheep. And even the President Clinton's bioethics commission, even the National Institutes of Health have acknowledged that this process of cloning, which Mr. West's firm is about to undertake, will produce human embryos. It is Orwellian to claim otherwise. And there was a poll just a month ago that asked should scientists be permitted to clone human embryos for the purpose of using them in medical research? Eighty-six percent of the public said no.

WEST: Can I just...

HARRIS: Go ahead, Mr. West.

WEST: ... just make a quick point? As an example here of this misunderstanding, which, again, takes a lot of time to explain, if you can't...

HARRIS: Mr. West, quickly please.

WEST: Yes, but you just heard this, Doug say this is, indeed, an individual human life. Well, sometimes we implant a single preimplantation embryo into a woman and we get identical twins. So in that case I would have to challenge him and say how can an individual human life suddenly surprise us and be two individual human lives?

HARRIS: Well, I'm going to have to interrupt here because there is no way that were going to be able to settle that particular point here in the few seconds that we have this morning.

JOHNSON: That's right.

HARRIS: We're going to have to wait for someone else to come, someone with an, I guess, a higher intellect to decide whether or not life begins in a cell dish or in a dish as a cell or whatever. But let me ask you this in practical terms now, President Bush has got to make a decision on this federal funding issue. If he decides either way, is one of your or both of you going to stop thinking of him as being pro-life or anti-abortion if, say, for instance, he goes ahead and approves federal funding for this research?

JOHNSON: Well, I'm not going to speculate about what President Bush is going to decide. The president's wife said just a few days ago she didn't know what he was thinking on this issue, so I certainly am not going to presume to speculate.

But it is important that people understand what Mr. West's firm is about to start doing. They are going to be starting human embryo farms and the documentation is on our Web site at nrlc.org.

HARRIS: That's quite a leap. We might give you the final word on that, Mr. West.

WEST: Good. Thanks. Well, the debate you'll hear is the pro- life movement, unfortunately, since they've gotten into this debate, using inflammatory language. So, you know, baby farms, Frankensteins, monsters. I would argue we're talking about saving millions of human lives and this is such a serious issue in terms of its potential medical impact -- which even the critics admit has major potential medical impact -- we need to take the time and not have a lynch mob mentality, let's rapidly take this to the gallows and execute a whole area of medical research. I think that's a disaster in the making.

HARRIS: Well, unfortunately, we don't have any more time to talk about it this morning. I wish we did. It's a tough topic to address with one's heart and mind.

But we thank both of you gentlemen for joining us this morning, Michael West and Douglas Johnson. Thank you very much.

WEST: Thank you.

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