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CNN Saturday Morning News

Food and Drug Administration Cracks Down on Cloning Efforts

Aired June 30, 2001 - 09:06   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: The Federal Drug Administration has -- Food and Drug Administration, I should say, has visited a laboratory that wants to produce a human clone, and it issued a blunt order: Stop the experiments. But the research director says the cloning will continue in a more hospitable environment, which is to say, offshore.

For more on this, we're joined by CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen, who's been tracking this story. Elizabeth, bring us up to date.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, what CNN has learned is that this group, called the Raelians, is planning on moving its cloning operations to an undisclosed location outside the United States. The chief scientist for this group has said that this -- that's the woman on the left, you can see her walking towards the camera -- said that the Food and Drug Administration, or an official from the Food and Drug Administration, visited her lab earlier this year and told her to stop all cloning experiments.

She 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, let's talk for a minute about the Raelians. They call themselves a religion. They believe that all human life was created by aliens. They also believe that Jesus was resurrected through a cloning technique performed by aliens. They have a scientific arm called Clonaid, and on their Web site, they call themselves "the first human cloning company."

Boisselier, who's testified in front of Congress, says even though some doubt their scientific abilities, she said they have the technical expertise to clone a human.

Now, this move to another country represents at least the third move for the Raelians. They left France and were kicked out of the Bahamas because of their efforts to clone a human being.

O'BRIEN: All right, Elizabeth. This group has some interesting viewpoints, so maybe we shouldn't dwell on them so much as we should talk about the issue of human cloning. There are other groups that are, after all, trying to do this.

Bring us up to date on some other efforts and what the FDA has done about them, if anything.

COHEN: Well, the original pro-cloning guy is a physicist by the name of Richard Seed (ph), and he received a lot of attention because following Dolly, of course the reaction from everyone was, Well, we did this in a sheep, please, let's not do this in a human being. And Richard Seed was kind of the only one who publicly said, No, I want to do this with a human being.

And it's now kind of believed that Seed really -- he really isn't as active as he used to be, and he really doesn't have the wherewithal to produce a human clone. But people -- many people believe that the Raelians could possibly have the scientific wherewithal to produce a human clone.

There's also another group that's led by a former professor from the University of Kentucky and some Italian researchers, and they are also trying to clone a human being. They've always had their efforts outside the United States for this reason.

O'BRIEN: All right. If you'll pardon me just a little bit on this, it appears as if we're on the fringes of the scientific community here. I don't see any Nobel laureates involved in this.

COHEN: Oh, no. Oh, no.

O'BRIEN: So, you know, how are we to evaluate how far along these efforts truly are, and how much of this might be some sort of way of attracting attention, funding, whatever?

COHEN: Well, it's very difficult to evaluate, because these folks, as you point out, are not Nobel laureates, and they won't even let us into their labs or even tell us where the lab is. So, you know, no one's gone in and say, Yes, they're using the right technique, or, No, they really have no idea what they're doing. It's very difficult to evaluate.

However, on the other hand, many scientists have said that -- scientists have said that the technology that was used to clone Dolly and that has now been done with mice and cows and many different kinds of animals is really quite easy, and it wouldn't take necessarily a Nobel laureate to do it with a human being.

O'BRIEN: Well, and if you sat down with a Nobel laureate and talked about science, they would tell you that these kinds of things are inevitable. If it is out there to be discovered, someone will discover it.

Why, though, why haven't we seen it more embraced by the scientific community?

COHEN: Because it just has what one emphasis called the yuck factor. I mean, no sort of scientist who's out there and successful in the -- in mainstream science is going to do something that polls show nine out of 10 Americans don't want done. Lawmakers are stepping all over each other to say, This is terrible. So if you're a Nobel laureate, you're not -- probably not going to step forward and say, Yes, I want to do this. You're probably going to be on the fringes.

O'BRIEN: All right, Elizabeth Cohen, this is fascinating grist for conversation.

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