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American Morning

Cloning Debate: Is Society Ready?

Aired August 07, 2001 - 09:01   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: Scientists are moving ahead with efforts to clone human beings and they will present and defend their plans today in Washington. Other scientists, though, are warning of horrific consequences from attempts at clothing -- cloning. Clothing's OK. Cloning might be something else.

Our medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is covering the controversy and she, I believe, is in Washington, D.C. this morning -- Elizabeth, good morning.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn.

Yes, I'm here at the National Academy of Sciences. The debate today is sure to be heated. On the one side are two groups that are trying to clone human beings. They consider it a humanitarian effort. That's their words, not mine. They say that there are infertile couples who can't have their own baby any other way except to clone either the mother or the father. So it would give them a baby that is a clone of either the mother or the father, though obviously several decades behind.

Now, the other side says wait just one minute. For every healthy clone, for example, Dolly the sheep, who was born four years ago, for every healthy clone like Dolly, there are thousands of clones who were born with horrible deformities, and so they say it is just unspeakably terrible to try to do that kind of experimentation with human beings.

In fact, I spoke earlier today with Dr. Ian Wilmet and he said, you know, these scientists who want to clone human beings, there's a good chance that they might actually be able to do it and come up with a healthy baby. But for every healthy baby, there are going to be thousands of deformities. And he said imagine on the way to a healthy baby the kind of carnage -- that's his word -- the kind of carnage that will create.

Now, Dr. Panos Zavos is going to be speaking here at the National Academy of Sciences. He's the head of one of the groups that's trying to clone someone. And he says that he doesn't think that these deformities will happen in people. He questions the animal studies and he says that everything will be fine with humans, maybe there's some risk, but he says it's minimal. He says that he'll screen the embryos before implanting them into a woman to start a pregnancy and he thinks that they will, in fact, be healthy. Now, people have been asking who is this Dr. Panos Zavos? Where does he come from? Where does he work? Well, he's originally from Cypress. He's now an American citizen and he has to his name a long list of academic and scientific publications. He also has a Web site and on this Web site he talks about various companies that he started and one of them is a company where, that can help make sperm, improve the quality of sperm so that parents can conceive. He also has another company called Sperm R Us.

So this is a man who has spent many decades in the fertility industry trying to help people achieve healthy pregnancies and he says cloning is just another way of doing that -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Elizabeth, I had no idea there was a Web site spermrus.com.

COHEN: There you go.

KAGAN: Tell me the time frame they're talking about here. When do they plan on getting started with this science experiment?

COHEN: Well, Zavos says that in November they'll be ready to make the embryos that they would use to start a pregnancy of a clone. The way that it works is he would take the DNA either from the mother or the father, he would turn it into an embryo and then impregnate the mother with that embryo. So the mother would either be pregnant with her own clone, or, he says, more likely for various technical reasons, the clone of her husband. And she would then theoretically give birth nine months later.

So he says in November he will have those embryos prepared. And I said well, when will you do the impregnation? And he says well, that would just be shortly thereafter. He didn't give a specific date.

KAGAN: Elizabeth Cohen in Washington, D.C.. Elizabeth, thank you.

About 15 minutes from now we're going to talk with a reproductive specialist who says that society is not ready for human cloning. Also, we'll bring you live coverage of today's human cloning announcement, 1:00 P.M. Eastern, 10:00 A.M. Pacific. And tune in tonight for Human Cloning: Science Or Sacrilege? That's the focus of a special report at 10:00 P.M. Eastern. Also, "GREENFIELD AT LARGE" at 10:30 Eastern.

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