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American Morning

Cloning Controversy

Aired August 07, 2001 - 10:14   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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Now on to medical news, where cutting edge research meets controversy. In just a few hours from now, researchers are expected to detail their plans for cloning a human. It's a matter that brings up complex ethical issues.

CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is at the conference in Washington where the researchers plan to speak. She's been covering this ongoing controversy and joins us now with the latest -- hi, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Kyra.

That's right. We're here at the National Academy of Sciences and this afternoon we expect to hear from scientists who are trying to clone human beings. They say it's a humanitarian effort. They say that because they say that there are infertile couples all over the world who cannot have a baby unless they clone either the mother or the father.

However, this morning scientists said that, other scientists said that they thought this was a terrible idea and they pointed to really horrific results from animal cloning experiments.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUDOLF JAENISCH, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY: The most common problems one sees, and this is in cows and sheep and goats and in mice, is fetal overgrowth, there's a defective placenta. And respiratory distress is a very common symptom and abnormal heart and circulatory problems.

So, of course, those latter two are often the immediate cause of perinatal death of cloned animals.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: In other words, what Rudolf Jaenisch at MIT is trying to say is that for every healthy clone, for example, Dolly the cloned sheep who was cloned four years ago, for every healthy clone like her there are thousands that turn out to be horribly deformed.

Now, this afternoon we expect to hear from Panos Zavos, who is one of the scientists who is an advocate, who is actually trying to clone a human being. And we expect to hear from him that he thinks in humans that they will not have these horrible results. He says that the risks are very small.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PANOS ZAVOS, FERTILITY EXPERT: Minimal. But at the same time, we don't live in a perfect world. And so the issue concerning this matter, which is a serious matter, is between the patient and the physician.

COHEN: And some of these people are desperate. I mean they've tried every. Have they said they're willing?

ZAVOS: They're willing to take the chance. They know that the chances are not even good for them to get pregnant. But that's life. So they are willing to be the guinea pig, so to speak, which of course we don't look at them that way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: Now, many people have asked who exactly is Panos Zavos? He's originally from Cypress. He has been in the United States for almost 35 years and he's a former professor at the University of Kentucky. He has many scientific and academic publications to his name.

He also has his own Web site, zavos.org, and on there he talks about the various companies that he started. One of them is called The Sperm R Us. You can see his Web site here. That's him right there. And there are, if you look on the left hand side, you can see a mechanical hand holding a sperm by the tail. I think that's his way of saying that sometimes he thinks Mother Nature just needs a little help.

He also has another company further down on the site called Sperm R Us and these are places where infertile men can go to get treatment.

So he says that he's very confident and, again, he says for all of these horrible effects in animals, he thinks human cloning is safe -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, Elizabeth Cohen, thanks so much.

And stay with CNN for the latest on this cloning issue. We will have live coverage of the announcement at 1:00 P.M. Eastern, 10:00 A.M. Pacific. And tonight we'll have an hour of special coverage on human cloning. That begins at 10:00 Prime Minister Eastern with our regularly scheduled "CNN TONIGHT" followed by more on cloning on "GREENFIELD AT LARGE."

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