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American Morning

Ethical Debate Over Cloning Resparked

Aired February 13, 2004 - 09:44   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.


BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: The news that South Korean scientists have cloned a human embryo reignites the medical and ethical debate over human cloning. Back with us today, Dr. Sanjay Gupta to talk more this and the impact of the potential breakthrough. Sanjay, good morning.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Bill. Perhaps a significant impact. Talking about cloning a human cell. Yes, they did do that. No, they did not clone a human baby. A distinction, an important one.

What we're talking about is a difference between therapeutic cloning, cloning for therapeutic purposes, versus cloning for reproductive purposes.

Want to talk about this a little bit because there is a debate, as you mentioned, Bill. But first of all, the hope of stem cells and the hope of therapeutic cloning has been something we've been talking about for some time.

If you can actually take these cells and use them for all sorts of different treatments, there's been a lot of studies saying how many people might benefit from this. About 128 million people in the United States alone have diseases right now that could potentially be treated by stem cells. Disease sucks as Parkinson's, diabetes, heart attack survivors.

Bill, for example, if you later in life were to develop Parkinson's disease, could you take a cell, develop some stem cells of your own and subsequently use that to treat your Parkinson's disease? So that you could get rid of those symptoms.

That's a possibility. That's what we're talking about here, sort of where the rubber hits the road.

What's most amazing is it probably doesn't seem that far away any more now. This was a critical step, an important step. Everybody thought this was going to happen at some point. Now it's going to be translating these things into those therapies. I think it's going to happen here in my lifetime.

HEMMER: In your lifetime. You say not that far away. Are you talking five years, ten years or can you put a figure on it?

GUPTA: You know, it's hard to say. I think if you to sort of measure incrementally, I think what happened yesterday, or over the last week was sort of a huge step and over time now you're going to see incremental steps.

You may start to see some treatments for relatively minor diseases. Probably over the next ten years, I'd say, you're going to see what researchers would call significant breakthroughs.

HEMMER: Back to the story in South Korea in Seoul. What was the technology they were using, the researchers?

GUPTA: You know, a good question, because actually the technology wasn't radically different than the technology that was used to clone Dolly the sheep. A lot of people remembered Dolly the sheep. It was actually very similar technology to that.

Let me give you a sense through an animation of this works. You can stick with this for a second. Basically, they take a cell from a woman, and in this case a Korean woman. They remove all the genetic material there as you see from that cell.

And then take genetic material from that same woman and reinject it into the cell, into an empty egg. Put it into a chemical bath, that's stimulates fertilization.

Over time, that egg starts to divide, you start to get cells within this -- what is know as a blastosis. And those cells are subsequently extracted. That's sort of the magic material, if you will. Those are the stem cells.

Once those cells are removed, the blastosis can no longer develop. The concern, Bill, and controversy as well is if that blastosis, that image that you just saw was subsequently implanted into a woman's uterus, that could potentially grow into a human being.

That's where the transition occurs between therapeutic cloning, reproductive cloning. Obviously, a controversial issue.

HEMMER: Controversial, indeed, and to be debated in years to come. Are there any safe guards in place that would prevent the cloning of a human being?

GUPTA: That's a great question as well.

You know, listen, in the United States this has been a political as well as an ethical issue. It's gone twice before the House. The House has passed legislation to ban all forms of cloning including reproductive and that for therapeutic purposes as well.

Twice in the Senate as recently as February of last year. It stalled in the Senate. So it's unlikely in this country both for financial as well as political reasons to ever occur.

But as we know, the Raelians, it was just about a year ago that they started to talk about the fact that they had cloned a human being. Could it happen? I think the technology is going to be out there. It probably could happen although it's a very inefficient process. So it's going to be a long time coming.

HEMMER: To be continued. Sanjay, thanks.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired February 13, 2004 - 09:44   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: The news that South Korean scientists have cloned a human embryo reignites the medical and ethical debate over human cloning. Back with us today, Dr. Sanjay Gupta to talk more this and the impact of the potential breakthrough. Sanjay, good morning.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Bill. Perhaps a significant impact. Talking about cloning a human cell. Yes, they did do that. No, they did not clone a human baby. A distinction, an important one.

What we're talking about is a difference between therapeutic cloning, cloning for therapeutic purposes, versus cloning for reproductive purposes.

Want to talk about this a little bit because there is a debate, as you mentioned, Bill. But first of all, the hope of stem cells and the hope of therapeutic cloning has been something we've been talking about for some time.

If you can actually take these cells and use them for all sorts of different treatments, there's been a lot of studies saying how many people might benefit from this. About 128 million people in the United States alone have diseases right now that could potentially be treated by stem cells. Disease sucks as Parkinson's, diabetes, heart attack survivors.

Bill, for example, if you later in life were to develop Parkinson's disease, could you take a cell, develop some stem cells of your own and subsequently use that to treat your Parkinson's disease? So that you could get rid of those symptoms.

That's a possibility. That's what we're talking about here, sort of where the rubber hits the road.

What's most amazing is it probably doesn't seem that far away any more now. This was a critical step, an important step. Everybody thought this was going to happen at some point. Now it's going to be translating these things into those therapies. I think it's going to happen here in my lifetime.

HEMMER: In your lifetime. You say not that far away. Are you talking five years, ten years or can you put a figure on it?

GUPTA: You know, it's hard to say. I think if you to sort of measure incrementally, I think what happened yesterday, or over the last week was sort of a huge step and over time now you're going to see incremental steps.

You may start to see some treatments for relatively minor diseases. Probably over the next ten years, I'd say, you're going to see what researchers would call significant breakthroughs.

HEMMER: Back to the story in South Korea in Seoul. What was the technology they were using, the researchers?

GUPTA: You know, a good question, because actually the technology wasn't radically different than the technology that was used to clone Dolly the sheep. A lot of people remembered Dolly the sheep. It was actually very similar technology to that.

Let me give you a sense through an animation of this works. You can stick with this for a second. Basically, they take a cell from a woman, and in this case a Korean woman. They remove all the genetic material there as you see from that cell.

And then take genetic material from that same woman and reinject it into the cell, into an empty egg. Put it into a chemical bath, that's stimulates fertilization.

Over time, that egg starts to divide, you start to get cells within this -- what is know as a blastosis. And those cells are subsequently extracted. That's sort of the magic material, if you will. Those are the stem cells.

Once those cells are removed, the blastosis can no longer develop. The concern, Bill, and controversy as well is if that blastosis, that image that you just saw was subsequently implanted into a woman's uterus, that could potentially grow into a human being.

That's where the transition occurs between therapeutic cloning, reproductive cloning. Obviously, a controversial issue.

HEMMER: Controversial, indeed, and to be debated in years to come. Are there any safe guards in place that would prevent the cloning of a human being?

GUPTA: That's a great question as well.

You know, listen, in the United States this has been a political as well as an ethical issue. It's gone twice before the House. The House has passed legislation to ban all forms of cloning including reproductive and that for therapeutic purposes as well.

Twice in the Senate as recently as February of last year. It stalled in the Senate. So it's unlikely in this country both for financial as well as political reasons to ever occur.

But as we know, the Raelians, it was just about a year ago that they started to talk about the fact that they had cloned a human being. Could it happen? I think the technology is going to be out there. It probably could happen although it's a very inefficient process. So it's going to be a long time coming.

HEMMER: To be continued. Sanjay, thanks.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com