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CNN Live Sunday

Cloned Human Embryo Creates Controversy

Aired November 25, 2001 - 18:37   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.
DONNA KELLEY, CNN ANCHOR: Not everyone is welcoming a new breakthrough in the world of medical science. Doctors in Massachusetts announced today that they have created human embryos through cloning. The White House says that President Bush is 100 percent opposed to the work, and wants it outlawed.

CNN's medical correspondent Rea Blakey has more details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REA BLAKEY, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A human clone has been created. It's not a walking, talking, human being, but a bunch of cells. And the company responsible for it, Advanced Cell Technology, says it's the dawn of a new era in medicine.

MICHAEL WEST, CEO, ADVANCED CELL TECHNOLOGY: We could use cloning technology, all the promises that it has, not to clone human beings, but to apply it to cells.

BLAKEY: CEO Michael West says his company's goal is to clone human embryonic stem cells as replacement cells to one day treat diseases like diabetes, cancer, AIDS, spinal cord injuries, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. But critics say the fact that human cloning is one of the techniques used to produce the potentially regenerative cells creates serious ethical problems.

DR. JEFFREY KAHN, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY BIOETHICIST: That's the real concern, is that the same technique that could be used to make embryos for stem cell research purposes could also be used to make them for reproductive cloning purposes. And we have no way to prevent that from happening.

KEVIN FITZGERALD, PRIEST AND BIOETHICIST: The issue is, once the technological information gets out there, the question is what are people going to do with it?

BLAKEY: Though Advanced Cell Technology's multi-celled embryos resemble human blastocysts, the first stages of life, West insists his company is not cloning humans.

WEST: We're talking about making human cellular life, not a human life.

BLAKEY: Still, the company's findings, published this week in scientific journals, provide a controversial recipe for cloning a human.

WEST: The potential benefit for human lives, people suffering from Parkinson's and diabetes and spinal cord injury, and this long list of disorders that could be cured using this technology, you know, we felt that it's so much more urgent to rapidly go and try to help these people who are sick.

BLAKEY (on-camera): Advanced Cell Technology says it could be 10 years before we see any practical application of this cloning technology in medicine.

Rea Blakey, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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