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CNN Saturday Morning News

Government Cracks Down on Human Cloning Efforts

Aired June 30, 2001 - 07:08   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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: A secretive and controversial effort to clone a human being is moving out of the United States. The move was prompted by a federal crackdown on the cloning lab.

CNN's Elizabeth Cohen introduces us to the people pushing the bounds of science and medical ethics.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There's a group called the Raelians, which is a group that now operates in the United States. They said that they received a visit earlier this year from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the FDA asked them to stop all of their cloning work. And so they have -- the group has decided that they will go move -- now move their operations to an undisclosed location outside the United States.

Now, the Brigitte Boisselier, who is the chief scientist for this group, the Raelians, told CNN, "I have no intention to prove if they," the FDA, "are wrong or right. But I'm confident we would win in court. But I'm not interested in a battle."

Now, the Raelians, some of -- some people doubt their ability to even clone a human being, because this is a group that calls themself -- themselves a religion, and they, for example, believe that aliens created all human life, so some people say that perhaps they really don't have the science anyhow.

However, they say that they really can do it. And since they managed to clone Dolly the sheep in 1997, that it really isn't that big of a leap to go then to humans.

Now, "U.S. News and World Report," in an upcoming issue, is planning on publishing that a federal grand jury has subpoenaed phone records from Brigitte Boisselier's house. And this is a group, if you look on their Web site, they have all sorts of interesting claims, among them, for example, that all human life was created by aliens. And it's very difficult to know. They won't allow us, they won't allow anyone into their labs, in fact, they won't tell anyone where their labs are.

So it's very difficult to judge. But again, many scientists have said, if you can do this in animals -- and it's been done in many species, cows, sheep, mice -- then you could do it in humans. And they've tried it in animals. Most of those animals have turned out to be deformed. They've been born with horrible birth defects. For every Dolly who seems to have come out perfectly fine, there are many more examples of animals who were born with horrible birth defects.

And that's why many scientists think this is terrible, because of have -- delivering an -- having an animal with birth defects is one thing. Having a human with birth defects is quite another. And ethicists, of course, also have all sorts of other objections to cloning, that there's no reason that you would want to clone a human life.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: The FDA has not independently confirmed it visited that lab in question, by the way.

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