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American Morning
Human Cloning Project
Aired August 07, 2001 - 11:01 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: Well, for the next few minutes you may think that you have tuned into the sci-fi channel. Two men -- one's the doctor, the other is an academic -- are set to reveal plans to create what they believe will be 200 human clones. Their announcement is set for two hours from now. They're holding it at a prestigious conference in Washington.
Critics are all over this one. They say technology isn't ready to clone a human. They warn today's announcement is nothing more than hype that could lead to some freaky results.
Let's check in with our medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen, who is live in Washington waiting for this announcement -- Elizabeth, good morning again.
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Daryn, good morning.
You know, the announcement hasn't even happened and already sparks are flying here at a meeting at the National Academy of Scientists, where experts from all over the world are getting together to talk about cloning.
On the one side of this debate is scientists who want to clone human beings, who say there are infertile couples all over the world who couldn't have a baby any other way except to clone either the mother or the father. On the other side are most of the other scientists, the vast majority of the world's scientists, who say hold on a minute. This is crazy. This is barbaric. When we tried this with animals, the animals have come out horribly deformed and it would be terrible to try to do that with human beings.
So what we're about to hear is an exchange between two scientists. The first scientist you'll hear from is named Panos Zavos and he is the one who is trying to clone human beings, who says he's ready to start in November. And he says that the studies on animals are incompetent, just not well done. And then after that you'll hear from a scientist by the name of Rudolf Jaenisch. He clones mice at MIT and he will talk about all of the horrible results that have happened.
So let's listen in.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PANOS ZAVOS, FERTILITY EXPERT: They may be calling us mad scientists, which, of course, we're not. But this is very important. Let me get this reaction first before I get a couple more questions, if I may.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Well, actually, we're running out of time so I'd like to ask you...
ZAVOS: But why do we run out of time when the real stuff is coming up for discussion.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: You'll have a chance to speak later in your session.
ZAVOS: OK.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: But if you would focus a question to Dr. Jaenisch and then we'll answer it and then we need to go on to the next...
ZAVOS: Well, the question is why don't you reveal your sources of variation so we can execute and duplicate your experiments?
RUDOLF JAENISCH, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY: OK. Let me, so generally when you write a scientific paper for science, you cannot write everything out. You give references. And it's all referenced in previous publications. Everything is referenced. You just have to read it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COHEN: So as you can see, these two scientists are very upset with each other -- with one another. One, at MIT, has done studies with mice and he says these cloned mice turn out to be horribly deformed. Another scientist who is trying to make human clones, he thinks, he told me he thinks these studies, they're just not well done. And he says that when he tries to clone human beings, he expects them really to come out OK, and if there's any risk at all it's minimal -- Daryn.
KAGAN: Elizabeth, let's talk a little bit about these scientists' plans. They're making this announcement here in the U.S., but this is not where they plan to conduct these experiments, is that right?
COHEN: Exactly. They said that they're definitely not going to do it in the United States. What they're looking -- what they say they've done is they've identified two countries where cloning is not illegal. They won't tell me what two countries they are, except we know it's not the U.S., and they say that 200 couples have volunteered. What scientists will do is take the DNA from either the mother or the father, turn it into an embryo and then impregnate the wife with that embryo. And these couples, they say, come from all over the world. They specifically named England, the United States and Italy.
KAGAN: Elizabeth Cohen in Washington, D.C., thank you very much.
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