Horizon (1964–…): Season 38, Episode 5 - Cloning the First Human - full transcript
Rome's Medical School has never
seen anything quite like it.
Prof Severino Antinori said hundreds of couples
have already agreed to take part in his experiment.
These two scientists claim they're about to do something
that many believe is both dangerous and wrong.
The genie is out of the bottle.
Something so extraordinary that it could
alter the very evolution of our species.
We don't need any permissions from anybody.
They say that next month in a secret laboratory
they will try to clone a human being.
We'll be careful.
But in the last few months
new research has revealed hidden dangers
so terrifying that most scientists now believe
human cloning would be disastrous.
So is science really ready to clone a human?
Can I have a word with you?
Where are you going?
I think I'm needed elsewhere.
K9,
cloning techniques, give me a rundown,
state-of-the-art so far.
Cloning.
Cloning is replication, making a copy
of an individual from a single cell of that individual.
Clones - clones retain characteristics
of original organism.
Go on, go on!
Cloning would be a completely new way
of making a human being.
Instead of the combination of father's sperm
and mother's egg that makes each of us unique,
cloning will create a baby
from a single cell from a single person.
The clone will be an identical genetic copy.
Cloning does not create anything new.
It creates a genetic copy of an existing being.
People have a, an extraordinary
emotional reaction
to cloning
because it's, it conjures up
all sorts of images:
duplication,
the images from science-fiction
of factory reproduction
and it really makes them
face the notion
that our technology is going
to allow us to intervene
even in the most intimate processes
of our lives,
so this is really big stuff.
Whatever its opponents say there are people
who will try the new technology.
For infertile couples who cannot make
babies with sperm and eggs,
cloning is a medical breakthrough
that could give them children of their own.
Desirée and Matthew are willing to take
the first steps into this brave new world.
Two years ago cancer treatment
left Desirée infertile.
I look at Matt and I look at, you know,
people our age
and they're just getting started with their family
and their wife is pregnant and they're so excited,
you know, it's their first baby and...
and it, it makes me sad to think
that I will never be able to do that for him.
In desperation they tried
to adopt a child,
but at the last moment
the arrangement fell through.
Anxious for another solution
Desirée began searching the Internet.
There she found
what she had thought impossible,
an extraordinary new way
to have a child genetically their own.
This was cloning.
And when he got home
I just met him at the door,
I was so excited, you know, look, look,
there's you know something out there
different than what we found.
I think at first I thought she was just full
of it and it was just a big hoax...
...on the Internet and then...
That's what I thought too.
But the more they found out,
the more convinced they became
that cloning was a real possibility
and the only one that could give
them what they wanted.
And then I realised wow, you know,
something else that, that might help us,
so it, it was a very good,
good discovery.
Just like another light at the end
of the tunnel. ~Yeah, yeah.
The men who claim they can help couples
like Desirée and Matthew
travel the world to champion their cause.
Last summer Dr Panayiotis Zavos
came to Oxford
to put the case for cloning to some
of the biggest names in British science.
Good evening, good evening everyone
and welcome to Oxford Union debates.
Everybody that comes to see us
as infertility specialists wants a child
yesterdayif at all possible
and the second thing is they want
a healthy child, therefore...
Dr Zavos is not a cloning expert,
but at his fertility clinic in Kentucky
he already makes a living
from making babies
and at $50,000 a try,
cloning will be a lucrative business.
...and therefore everybody needs to understand
that we are responsible individuals
understanding the needs of people
that are not here tonight.
Infertility patients don't rise
like everybody else that rises here
and wants to make a point.
It's a silent disease
and therefore we need to address that.
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen...
But many scientists are not impressed.
...unethical. What you are doing
is incredibly disreputable.
What you are doing is utterly appalling.
Do you know, I don't mind
if you clone a human being actually,
because I think you would get
the full force of the law
when inevitably you produce an abnormal child
and the parents of the child
will sue you through the court
and God help you when that happens
and you deserve the full force of the law,
whether it be in the United States
or in Italy.
What Dr Zavos and his colleagues
are proposing
has so far only ever been
done in animals.
They will take an egg
from a woman and remove its nucleus,
the part which contains her DNA.
They will be left with a hollow egg.
Next they will take a cell from the body
of the adult who is to be cloned.
It's from this cell that they will
make a new human being,
an identical genetic copy.
The way an adult would be cloned would be
you have to take a cell
from that adult
and you might be able to get
that from a tissue swab in the cheek
or from a scraping of skin
or from a little biopsy
and the cell would then be
taken to the laboratory.
Once they have selected the cell
scientists will take its DNA
and insert it into the empty egg.
Then they will have to stimulate
the egg to begin to grow.
They might use an electric shock
and add chemicals,
the methods used in animals.
No one understands how or why,
but this process should
switch the adult cell back
to become the very first cell of life.
The new embryo will be grown
in a dish for a few days,
then implanted into a woman's womb
where it might grow into a human being.
This human would be a clone.
Nine months later you would have a child
and the only difference
between that child
and a child that had been
conceived normally
would be that the child would have
the exact same genetic constitution
as the individual who donate,
donated the original tissue,
the original nucleus.
It's the promise
of that identical genetic constitution
that makes some people see cloning
as a way to raise the dead.
Earlier this year Al Powell's mother
was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Devastated, he found hope in the idea
that cloning could give her a second chance.
I followed like the cloning controversy
and then it just kind of
like I start thinking about, you know,
the possibility of cloning my Mom
'cos at that time this is just
2½ months maybe before she died,
I realised she wasn't going
to live that long.
But to be able to clone
their mother in the future
they would have to get
a tissue sample from her and have it frozen,
and they couldn't find
a scientist willing to do the job.
It had come down to where
my brother and I were going to do it
after my Mom passed away
and so we contacted someone
who told us how to do it.
You could either do it
from like the upper arm
or from her, from her leg,
from her lower leg
and you could actually do it
with like, you know, scissors,
everything would have
to be sterilised, you'd use gloves.
Fortunately they didn't have to
and a doctor agreed to perform
the vital operation properly.
I just went in, just my,
just by myself with a doctor
and we actually had six phials.
Then he took some, some tissue samples,
you know, little, you know
he cut 'em up
and put 'em in the samples
and then sealed them.
We actually then, next day,
we FedEx'd them to this laboratory.
Now six pieces of Al's mother
are frozen in a vat somewhere in America
waiting for the era
of human cloning to begin,
but until recently many thought
that era would never come.
For over 30 years researchers had been
trying to clone animals from adult cells.
It had never worked.
By the 1980s many leading scientists
were saying it was impossible.
If you asked some geneticist
25 years ago
whether we would do, be doing
the things that we're doing today,
even whether we would know
the sequence of the entire human genome,
they would have said no way
that's going to happen in that period of time.
But in February 1997 the age
of cloning began with a sheep called Dolly.
#Isn't it strange#
(Weird Al Yankovic)
#Feels like I'm lookin' in the mirror#
#What would people say#
#If only they knew that I was#
#Part of some geneticist's plan (plan-plan-plan)#
#Born to be a carbon copy man (man-man-man)#
#Born in a science lab late one night#
#Without a mother or a father,
just a test tube and a womb with a view#
#I think I'm a clone now (a clone now)#
#There's always two of me just a-hangin' around#
#I think I'm a clone now...#
So far cloning has been successful in sheep,
cattle, pigs, goats and mice.
But the scientists doing it
were never aiming to make human babies.
Instead they see cloning
as a new kind of farming,
a way to create animals
genetically engineered for our benefit.
ACTUALITY AUCTIONEERING DIALOGUE
In the next few years this cattle fair might
be trading animals which make human anti-bodies,
or medicines, in their milk.
This will be possible because of cloning.
Genetically engineer one animal
and you'll be able to clone a whole herd.
And away from the hype about cloned babies
mainstream scientists do also see
good reason for cloning from human cells.
They're hoping to treat incurable conditions
like Parkinson's or heart disease
by growing new brain or heart cells
cloned from the patient.
But behind all the optimism
lies a stark reality.
At the Roslin Institute,
the lab which made history with Dolly,
scientists have found
their success very hard to repeat.
For every one hundred cells
injected into eggs
typically only two or three
clones will be born alive.
Most will either fail to start
growing into an embryo at all,
or fail to implant in the womb
and in the few cases
where pregnancies begin
many of the cloned animals die
before they even make it to birth.
It can happen at any time
during the development of pregnancy.
Sometimes my colleagues
would see the placenta going wrong,
sometimes things would look perfectly normal,
you'd be expecting a live birth
within a few days and the, the lamb would die,
the foetus would die because of some abnormality
that you couldn't detect by ultrasound.
Then there was the strange case
of a cloned lamb
which began life
seeming perfectly normal.
We were very excited
by the fact that it was born naturally
and was essentially very healthy,
except for one thing
which was that it panted all the time,
just the same way that you and I
would if we'd been running for a hundred yards,
but all of the time night and day
and obviously my veterinary colleagues
took advice from other vets
and from the Children's Hospital
and tried any of the treatments
that were recommended,
but unfortunately none of them
were able to correct the condition.
And it wasn't just the Roslin lambs.
Around the world some clones were dying
of bizarre, inexplicable conditions.
In cloned animals
of all the different species
there've been an enormous variety
of, of different abnormalities.
In the kidneys, the livers,
the hearts, the blood vessels,
the skin, the musculature
of the, the body wall...
...heart defects, limb abnormalities
and facial abnormalities, but not...
...the newborns have been born
with their insides on the outside.
We know that they have immunological problems,
they have pulmonary problems, they have cardiac...
...within hours of birth
they tend to die...
...the musculature of the, the body wall,
the brain, the face. I think...
...some of them are able to breathe,
but only breathe if they're on oxygen.
Whoever heard of a calf grazing
with oxygen on its back?
Scientists had to get to the bottom
of the mysterious deaths.
They took the organs from clones
which had died and prepared tissue samples.
Pathologist Susan Rhind
was one of the first
to examine samples
from dead clones under the microscope.
What she has found is shocking.
These lambs showed serious problems
with their breathing
so an obvious place to start looking
was in the lung tissue itself
to see if there was any problems there
and if we look at a section
here from a normal lamb
and what we've got here
is a large airway
bringing the air down
into the lung
and if we can focus on this structure
here which is a blood vessel
and at this same magnification move on
to looking at the lung from a cloned lamb,
we can see instantly how different
they are from the normal.
We have a blood vessel
which is massively enlarged
and the size of this is really far beyond
what one would normally expect in a normal lung.
The more samples she looked at
the worse the picture became.
This next slide here
is too big to even put on the screen.
I mean this is, is an even
more massively enlarged vessel.
The lambs' hearts couldn't
cope with the task
of trying to push blood round gigantic
vessels 20 times bigger than they should be.
These clones had no chance.
It's not possible to pick up these abnormalities
by ultrasound and carry out...
For the Roslin Institute Science Director,
Harry Griffin,
the fate of clones like these should sound
a warning to anyone who wants to clone a human.
...told us that this animal was suffering from
a major cardiovascular problem that was untreatable.
We put this animal down
because we didn't want it to suffer any longer.
Now if any of you are tempted
with the idea of cloning a human being,
and I would ask Dr Zavos
this question,
given that sort of defect
what would he do with it?
All those experiments
that is done in animals today
are obviously done
on a hit and miss type basis...
But Dr Zavos insists
that long experience of making human babies
makes him a safer pair of hands.
...Dr Zavos has been producing
children for the last 25 years
and not one single baby,
abnormal baby was born ever
and we don't intend to have
one single child ever be born
from such an effort, ever.
Lambs are lambs, humans are humans.
Dr Griffin has to realise
what the difference is
and that's what the difference is.
Thank you.
The difference in this case
of course is that
in the UK and elsewhere
we're allowed to experiment on lambs,
we're not allowed
to experiment on human beings.
And the point that I'm...
Dr Zavos may be confident
but the more the scientists examined
different organs from dead clones
the worse the picture became.
They found a bizarre array
of deformities never seen in nature.
On the left is a cross-section
of a kidney from a normal lamb,
on the right, on the same scale,
are cross-sections from two clones.
These kidneys are shrunken
with much of their tissue missing
and there were other problems.
A normal lamb's liver is mostly
made up of healthy liver cells,
seen here in pink,
but in the clones most of the liver was made
of strange, unspecialised cells
that couldn't function as liver cells.
The implications for human
cloning were terrifying.
If a human baby born with these kinds
of defects were to survive at all
many scientists now believe it would
suffer devastating illnesses unknown to medicine,
but Dr Zavos and his Italian associate,
Dr Severino Antinori,
are confident they can produce
healthy human clones.
We have no intentions to step over dead bodies
or deformed babies to accomplish this.
I'm not sure
to permit to continue the pregnancy
if there is some abnormality.
And the prospect of having
an abnormal child
is not enough to deter people
desperate for a family.
Couples like Desirée and Matthew seem to have
no idea how profound the problems might be.
But even if there was something
wrong with the child
we wouldn't toss the child away.
We'd both still raise it to the best
of our ability and treat it as a normal child.
I would be like, me,
if I could get pregnant myself
and we found out
at five months that it,
you know it didn't have
an arm or a leg or something,
I mean then telling us we could abort it
I don't really think we would.
I don't see us being that type
of people, you know.
We created it we're going,
you know it's our responsibility.
But the scientists who had seen
the scale of the problems
knew they had to get
to the bottom of what was going wrong.
They tested many theories.
Perhaps clones made from adult cells
were just dying from premature old age,
perhaps cloning was causing
strange mutations in their genes,
but everything they looked at
seemed normal.
Many began to suspect that the problem lay
in the great mystery at the heart of cloning:
how could a single cell taken from an adult
make a whole new animal, or human?
We have a system which has evolved
over millions of years to make fertilisation work,
very effectively usually,
and what we are asking it to do
is something totally different,
so really we shouldn't be surprised
that it doesn't work very well.
In a way almost we should be
surprised that it does work sometimes.
The way we are made
is incredibly complex.
Our genes are like
the plates on a printing press.
Each gene is a template
that produces a message.
To operate they need
to be switched on
and when they're switched on
the different genes produce different messages
that tell the cells how to build
all the organs and tissues we need.
To make a healthy human
our genes need to be
switched on at the right time
in an intricate cascade
and crucially when a process is complete
they need to be switched off again,
but the bizarre defects in cloned animals,
like the massive blood vessels,
suggested that something was going wrong
with these critical instructions,
so researchers began
the quest to discover the problem.
The first clue was to come
from a scientist who wasn't doing cloning,
but was working in a related area: IVF.
For years scientists
had been puzzled by the fact
that some animals made by IVF
for selective breeding
grew dangerously large in the womb,
something that also happens to clones.
When Lorraine Young first set out
to discover what was going wrong
it seemed an impossible task.
To try and pinpoint
what was going wrong
was essentially
a needle in a haystack type exercise.
There are about 30,000 genes
in every cell in, in an embryo
and really any one of those
could be going wrong.
The answer to why the animals
were growing too big
could lie anywhere
among 30,000 genes,
but Dr Young knew of something
which might help narrow the search.
It was a rare disease in humans -
Beckwith Wiedemann syndrome.
Thelma was born with symptoms
of Beckwith Wiedemann syndrome.
It's a disease in which a vital few genes
that control how we grow go wrong.
When Thelma was born
she ended up being born
with a part of her intestines
formed outside of her stomach wall
and she required surgery
within one or two days of having been born.
Beckwith Wiedemann syndrome causes
dangerous errors in the way babies grow.
They're often born very large
with huge tongues
and other problems that have
to be corrected with surgery
and cells in the liver and kidney
can also grow out of control causing tumours.
All this is caused by an error
in the functioning
of one of a small number of genes
that control how babies grow.
As a result, too much growth
factor may be produced
which in turn causes the tumours
and abnormal growth.
Thelma will have to have
ultrasound scans every three months
until she is eight
to check for tumours.
Well we try to go into these screenings
very optimistic every time,
but you never know if it's going
to be OK until you, till the doctor,
you know, takes his look
and says it's OK
and you try not to think
about what it would be like
if they came back and said it's not OK,
that it means cancer,
you know, and you don't want
your child to go through that.
Now Lorraine Young had a hunch
that the same group of genes
that caused problems in children like Thelma
could also be making
the IVF animals and clones grow too big.
She began comparing the chemical signals
coming from these genes
in healthy lambs and overgrown lambs.
It would take many months
of painstaking work,
but finally she found
a crucial difference.
One of the genes she was studying
is meant to keep growth under control,
but Dr Young found it wasn't producing
strong enough signals
and when she analysed it
she found that something vital
was missing.
The switch that should turn
the gene on,
a tiny molecule
called a methyl molecule
wasn't where it should be.
Without this switch
the gene wouldn't work
and the animal would grow
out of control.
This observation shows
that loss of these methyl groups from the DNA
was enough to make the animals grow large
and this was our most important
result to date.
Dr Young had done her work
in IVF animals,
but perhaps the same thing
was going wrong in clones,
perhaps the abnormalities were caused
by switches like methyl molecules being disturbed.
To test this theory scientists around the world
began to look at tissue from clones
to see whether metal molecules had gone awry.
Like other scientists, Dr Zavos
had also read about Lorraine Young's findings.
We're going to begin doing human reproductive
cloning as early as probably 30-60 days from now.
I ... and see that as a problem,
and unless...
For him a problem found
was as good as a problem solved.
Horizon has tracked down a document
in which Zavos claims
he can actually make cloning safer
by screening cloned embryos
for the sort of errors Dr Young found
and only using ones
that look normal.
Frankly I think the claims
are ludicrous and absolutely irresponsible.
I find there's absolutely
no scientific basis for them.
It's poorly referenced and there's
no real explanation of how he will do things.
It just demonstrates a complete lack
of scientific understanding in my opinion.
Dr Zavos couldn't be
interviewed by Horizon
because he's tied in
to a broadcasting contract elsewhere,
but he claims that if the embryo has normal-looking
methyl molecules on its growth genes
he will assume it's healthy.
He and Dr Antinori believe that tests
like these will prevent many abnormalities.
We will check and complete the procedure
to monitor, to avoid 99% the abnormality.
But Dr Young believes that the problem doesn't
just affect the genes she's looked at,
it could affect any gene.
There could easily still be problems
in a whole range of other genes.
He's going to be missing absolutely
thousands of other problems.
I mean he's going
to be missing everything.
In the last few months Dr Young's
research has been backed up by other studies.
Around the world scientists
have published the first results
showing that cloning sometimes causes
vital methyl molecules to go awry on many genes.
These results have led some scientists
to a radical and devastating conclusion:
that cloning can cause random errors
in the switching of any one of 30,000 genes.
The clone may develop normally
until some key gene,
like a time bomb,
causes disaster
and they believe human cloning
would be just as risky.
The most likely outcome
would include late abortions,
the birth of dead children
and perhaps worst of all, the birth
of children which survive but which were abnormal.
And the risks don't end
when we're born
because as our bodies change
at key stages in our lives
we're dependent on genes
switching on and off at the right time.
Things can go wrong at any time.
There are some genes which,
for example,
are necessary to make
a child go through adolescence
and not really important
before then,
so if you have an abnormality
in that gene
the child might not become
a, a, a normal adolescent
and you could see failures
at, at any time of development.
That I think is what
we should anticipate
if anybody clones a person
with our present techniques.
But there are other scientists who believe
the case against cloning is hugely exaggerated
and that these early problems
will be quickly overcome.
To take those very early experiments
which look at only a handful of genes
and try to make some grand statement
that cloning will never be feasible in humans
or that it will be a very hard process
or to make any assumption of that sort
is unwarranted
given the very preliminary nature
of these studies.
Dr Zavos and his team also think
their opponents are exaggerating the risks.
Hello Dolly.
He ridicules recent claims
that Dolly herself
may have something wrong
with her brain.
Now Dolly was doing OK
until recently when we heard the news
and I was shocked Dolly does have an IQ problem.
For crying out loud after four
or five years old Dolly is, is stupid.
Now for the life of me
neither Oxford nor any other institution
has developed an IQ test for sheep.
Let's get serious ladies and gentlemen.
You cannot do that.
Of course I, I know about sheep because
I was a sheep herder during my early life
and I can tell you that I haven't met a sheep
that is, has got an IQ above minus 10.
And scare tactics are one thing,
the facts of life are another
and we need to stick with the facts.
What is a clone?
Mother Nature has its way
of doing cloning.
That is the identical twinning.
The embryo splits and gives rise
to two lovely children.
A lady called me...
Dr Zavos is right.
Nature already creates thousands
of completely normal clones every year,
but recent research has revealed
some remarkable cases of twins
who are changing scientists' view
of what will happen if humans are cloned.
Oh what a shot, that's right.
Ricky and Erica are twins.
It's always special for every father
to be in the delivery room for the first time.
It was exciting, very exciting.
She wanted a girl and I wanted a boy
and we were happy, you know, like...
Very excited.
We had what we wanted and...
we had the millionaires family
without the million dollars.
It was nice.
Because they were different sexes
everybody thought that the babies
were non-identical, or fraternal twins,
conceived when two separate eggs
were fertilised by two separate sperm.
They would be as alike, or unalike,
as any brother and sister.
This seemed to be confirmed when Ricky
was born healthy, but Erica was not.
She had some worrying symptoms.
Suspecting a rare genetic illness,
scientists did full genetic
fingerprinting tests on both twins
and what they discovered
was astonishing.
They're identical twins.
I guess they are identical twins, but they're...
But they're boy and girl.
But they're boy and girl,
so like you know the, what are
the odds of having identical twins,
boy and a girl - one in ten million?
I don't know.
You have to be a scientist to understand.
To understand that one.
With Ricky and Erica,
nature's intended clones had
turned out to be very different,
so what went wrong?
The genetic tests revealed
that the reason lay in their chromosomes.
Ricky and Erica started off as a single,
fertilised egg with an X and Y chromosome.
With an X and Y this embryo
should have become a boy,
but as the first cells divided
one cell lost its Y chromosome
so some cells began to form
which only had an X.
Then the embryo split.
One half had mostly XY cells -
this became Ricky.
The other half had only cells
with just one X -
this survived to become
a baby girl, Erica,
but it takes two X chromosomes
to make a normal girl,
so Erica is different.
Girls with a missing X have
a disease called Turner's syndrome.
...one, two, three, go!
Happy birthday to me! I know...
Happy birthday to you!
The twins are celebrating
their eleventh birthday,
but Erica is fortunate
to have reached this age.
She has had to have heart surgery
and have her ovaries removed
and as both twins approach adolescence
the future looks uncertain.
This weekend she's 11 years old
and it's creeping up on me
and I think about it
every day, the day I have to,
you know, explain to her that she's not
like every, every other little girl
and when it comes to having a child
he'll have to know that
she's... can't do it
like everyone else has.
Some scientists argue that
if making clones naturally
can result in unfortunate
genetic diseases
then man-made clones
will be at much greater risk,
but to others, making babies by any means
is always going to be risky,
so cloning is not exceptional.
The truth is that natural reproduction
is a very, very dangerous procedure.
We have abnormalities all the time.
We have natural miscarriages
and we have 3-4% of actual children
that are born who have genetic
abnormalities of one sort or another.
We can't ask for absolute
safety with cloning,
but we can ask
for a level of safety
that is similar to those
with other reproductive procedures.
Within a few seconds of birth
there was a huge, loud howl from Louise
and the baby had arrived.
23 years ago a healthy
baby girl called Louise
overturned people's fears
about interfering with reproduction.
Louise was the first test-tube baby
made by bringing sperm and egg
together in a dish.
Today IVF is routine
and Doctors Zavos and Antinori claim
that cloning will be just as safe.
Whatever the consequences are
you will go ahead with it?
There are not going
to be any consequences.
We think that we can,
we can hit as high as IVF success
which is about 30%
in the US right now.
But over the past decade
a new form of IVF has emerged
which is far more invasive.
In a technique called ICSI
weak sperm which could not
penetrate an egg naturally
are injected with a needle.
Until human cloning is attempted
ICSI is the only model we have
to judge how human cells will stand up to the kinds
of manipulations which cloning will involve.
Although ICSI has produced
thousands of healthy babies,
a small number of scientists
have begun to report problems.
Several have linked ICSI
to a higher risk of abnormalities.
Some of the problems are likely
to be inherited from the faulty sperm,
but does the technique itself,
which involves injecting DNA
into the heart of an egg,
cause problems?
In the US one team decided to compare
what happened to sperm and egg
during the first few hours after
normal fertilisation and after ICSI.
They saw some worrying differences.
These are human sperm
prior to fertilisation
and you can see
that they have this necktie like structure
around the equator of the sperm chromosomes.
(The chromosomes are in blue.)
During fertilisation naturally,
this necktie would be lost
at the surface of the egg,
but in contrast after ICSI
here is a sperm in the egg
and you can see that the red collar persists
and that the sperm
is not inflating uniformly
as a round balloon but instead
is constricted by that necktie.
In nature a sperm's DNA
would swell uniformly
ready to combine
with an egg's DNA,
but after ICSI they found
the sperm's packaging got in the way
and the vital sex chromosome
became trapped.
The implications for cloning are serious
because instead of injecting a sperm
they'll use the nucleus
of a completely different kind of cell
that was never designed
to meet an egg,
so the potential for this kind
of error is much greater.
Contrast that with cloning
an animal like Dolly.
Well first the mother's
chromosomes are removed.
We don't know what else is removed
when the mother's chromosomes are removed.
We don't wake the egg up
by having a sperm wake the egg up.
Frequently we use an electric zap.
I mean is, is electrocution
the best way to start off in life.
It certainly isn't the method
that's mirrored naturally.
But still Doctors Zavos and Antinori
claim they're on the brink of the experiment
that will alter the course
of human evolution.
Of course we're going to go ahead
with it, no matter what.
The infertility couples are the ones
that make those decisions,
not us,
not them,
nobody else.
We are considering 200 couples.
That doesn't mean that 200 couples
will be cloned immediately.
We will start with the first one
and we'll finish
with the two hundredth one.
So could they actually succeed?
Until they try it's impossible to tell,
but other scientists have already
tried to clone our close relatives -
Rhesus monkeys.
So far from more than a thousand attempts
to clone a monkey from an adult cell,
not a single one has succeeded.
The DNA has so fragmented
that no cloned embryo has yet survived,
but some believe
it's only a matter of time
before these hurdles are overcome
and that progress towards
human cloning is inevitable.
First there will be
a refinement of the technologies
that are being applied
to sheep and cattle and mice.
There will be clonings
that occur in dogs and cats
and they will be reliable enough
that actually people will be
interested in cloning their own pets.
There will be clonings
that occur in Rhesus monkeys
that will demonstrate
these procedures are feasible in primates
and at that point the risks
will be sufficiently reduced
that some group like the Zavoses
and Antinoris of the world
will leap in and attempt and actually
succeed at doing a human cloning.
And as the drive towards
cloning continues
more and more people are drawn
to seek this new way to change their lives.
I think I would say walk in our shoes.
For one week walk in our shoes
and then, and then judge, you know.
Be, be in our situation
and then judge us
and I can guarantee you
they will have a different judgement.
The reason why I condemn you
is for the same reason that virtually
all responsible real scientists
who publish real information
condemns what you are doing
and criticises what you're doing...
For now, mainstream science,
politicians and public opinion
believe that cloning humans
would be courting disaster.
...the reason why you should not
be cloning is because it's dangerous,
because it's unnecessary
and because actually it is damaging
our respect for human life
and the dignity of human beings
and you should be ashamed
of what you are doing.
But the momentum towards cloning
may be unstoppable.
We either do it right,
ladies and gentlemen,
or we don't do it
and those incidentally
that wish to ban this technology,
and I said this to the US Congress
and I will say that to you tonight,
they are not going to be the Neil Armstrongs
that would fly, that would fly us to the Moon
and walk us on it,
therefore we need to be courageous,
we need to move forward
and we need to develop this technology
in a safe, responsible fashion
and I think it is
the right thing to do
and we intend to do that.
Thank you.
Converted into subtitles by m06166
seen anything quite like it.
Prof Severino Antinori said hundreds of couples
have already agreed to take part in his experiment.
These two scientists claim they're about to do something
that many believe is both dangerous and wrong.
The genie is out of the bottle.
Something so extraordinary that it could
alter the very evolution of our species.
We don't need any permissions from anybody.
They say that next month in a secret laboratory
they will try to clone a human being.
We'll be careful.
But in the last few months
new research has revealed hidden dangers
so terrifying that most scientists now believe
human cloning would be disastrous.
So is science really ready to clone a human?
Can I have a word with you?
Where are you going?
I think I'm needed elsewhere.
K9,
cloning techniques, give me a rundown,
state-of-the-art so far.
Cloning.
Cloning is replication, making a copy
of an individual from a single cell of that individual.
Clones - clones retain characteristics
of original organism.
Go on, go on!
Cloning would be a completely new way
of making a human being.
Instead of the combination of father's sperm
and mother's egg that makes each of us unique,
cloning will create a baby
from a single cell from a single person.
The clone will be an identical genetic copy.
Cloning does not create anything new.
It creates a genetic copy of an existing being.
People have a, an extraordinary
emotional reaction
to cloning
because it's, it conjures up
all sorts of images:
duplication,
the images from science-fiction
of factory reproduction
and it really makes them
face the notion
that our technology is going
to allow us to intervene
even in the most intimate processes
of our lives,
so this is really big stuff.
Whatever its opponents say there are people
who will try the new technology.
For infertile couples who cannot make
babies with sperm and eggs,
cloning is a medical breakthrough
that could give them children of their own.
Desirée and Matthew are willing to take
the first steps into this brave new world.
Two years ago cancer treatment
left Desirée infertile.
I look at Matt and I look at, you know,
people our age
and they're just getting started with their family
and their wife is pregnant and they're so excited,
you know, it's their first baby and...
and it, it makes me sad to think
that I will never be able to do that for him.
In desperation they tried
to adopt a child,
but at the last moment
the arrangement fell through.
Anxious for another solution
Desirée began searching the Internet.
There she found
what she had thought impossible,
an extraordinary new way
to have a child genetically their own.
This was cloning.
And when he got home
I just met him at the door,
I was so excited, you know, look, look,
there's you know something out there
different than what we found.
I think at first I thought she was just full
of it and it was just a big hoax...
...on the Internet and then...
That's what I thought too.
But the more they found out,
the more convinced they became
that cloning was a real possibility
and the only one that could give
them what they wanted.
And then I realised wow, you know,
something else that, that might help us,
so it, it was a very good,
good discovery.
Just like another light at the end
of the tunnel. ~Yeah, yeah.
The men who claim they can help couples
like Desirée and Matthew
travel the world to champion their cause.
Last summer Dr Panayiotis Zavos
came to Oxford
to put the case for cloning to some
of the biggest names in British science.
Good evening, good evening everyone
and welcome to Oxford Union debates.
Everybody that comes to see us
as infertility specialists wants a child
yesterdayif at all possible
and the second thing is they want
a healthy child, therefore...
Dr Zavos is not a cloning expert,
but at his fertility clinic in Kentucky
he already makes a living
from making babies
and at $50,000 a try,
cloning will be a lucrative business.
...and therefore everybody needs to understand
that we are responsible individuals
understanding the needs of people
that are not here tonight.
Infertility patients don't rise
like everybody else that rises here
and wants to make a point.
It's a silent disease
and therefore we need to address that.
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen...
But many scientists are not impressed.
...unethical. What you are doing
is incredibly disreputable.
What you are doing is utterly appalling.
Do you know, I don't mind
if you clone a human being actually,
because I think you would get
the full force of the law
when inevitably you produce an abnormal child
and the parents of the child
will sue you through the court
and God help you when that happens
and you deserve the full force of the law,
whether it be in the United States
or in Italy.
What Dr Zavos and his colleagues
are proposing
has so far only ever been
done in animals.
They will take an egg
from a woman and remove its nucleus,
the part which contains her DNA.
They will be left with a hollow egg.
Next they will take a cell from the body
of the adult who is to be cloned.
It's from this cell that they will
make a new human being,
an identical genetic copy.
The way an adult would be cloned would be
you have to take a cell
from that adult
and you might be able to get
that from a tissue swab in the cheek
or from a scraping of skin
or from a little biopsy
and the cell would then be
taken to the laboratory.
Once they have selected the cell
scientists will take its DNA
and insert it into the empty egg.
Then they will have to stimulate
the egg to begin to grow.
They might use an electric shock
and add chemicals,
the methods used in animals.
No one understands how or why,
but this process should
switch the adult cell back
to become the very first cell of life.
The new embryo will be grown
in a dish for a few days,
then implanted into a woman's womb
where it might grow into a human being.
This human would be a clone.
Nine months later you would have a child
and the only difference
between that child
and a child that had been
conceived normally
would be that the child would have
the exact same genetic constitution
as the individual who donate,
donated the original tissue,
the original nucleus.
It's the promise
of that identical genetic constitution
that makes some people see cloning
as a way to raise the dead.
Earlier this year Al Powell's mother
was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Devastated, he found hope in the idea
that cloning could give her a second chance.
I followed like the cloning controversy
and then it just kind of
like I start thinking about, you know,
the possibility of cloning my Mom
'cos at that time this is just
2½ months maybe before she died,
I realised she wasn't going
to live that long.
But to be able to clone
their mother in the future
they would have to get
a tissue sample from her and have it frozen,
and they couldn't find
a scientist willing to do the job.
It had come down to where
my brother and I were going to do it
after my Mom passed away
and so we contacted someone
who told us how to do it.
You could either do it
from like the upper arm
or from her, from her leg,
from her lower leg
and you could actually do it
with like, you know, scissors,
everything would have
to be sterilised, you'd use gloves.
Fortunately they didn't have to
and a doctor agreed to perform
the vital operation properly.
I just went in, just my,
just by myself with a doctor
and we actually had six phials.
Then he took some, some tissue samples,
you know, little, you know
he cut 'em up
and put 'em in the samples
and then sealed them.
We actually then, next day,
we FedEx'd them to this laboratory.
Now six pieces of Al's mother
are frozen in a vat somewhere in America
waiting for the era
of human cloning to begin,
but until recently many thought
that era would never come.
For over 30 years researchers had been
trying to clone animals from adult cells.
It had never worked.
By the 1980s many leading scientists
were saying it was impossible.
If you asked some geneticist
25 years ago
whether we would do, be doing
the things that we're doing today,
even whether we would know
the sequence of the entire human genome,
they would have said no way
that's going to happen in that period of time.
But in February 1997 the age
of cloning began with a sheep called Dolly.
#Isn't it strange#
(Weird Al Yankovic)
#Feels like I'm lookin' in the mirror#
#What would people say#
#If only they knew that I was#
#Part of some geneticist's plan (plan-plan-plan)#
#Born to be a carbon copy man (man-man-man)#
#Born in a science lab late one night#
#Without a mother or a father,
just a test tube and a womb with a view#
#I think I'm a clone now (a clone now)#
#There's always two of me just a-hangin' around#
#I think I'm a clone now...#
So far cloning has been successful in sheep,
cattle, pigs, goats and mice.
But the scientists doing it
were never aiming to make human babies.
Instead they see cloning
as a new kind of farming,
a way to create animals
genetically engineered for our benefit.
ACTUALITY AUCTIONEERING DIALOGUE
In the next few years this cattle fair might
be trading animals which make human anti-bodies,
or medicines, in their milk.
This will be possible because of cloning.
Genetically engineer one animal
and you'll be able to clone a whole herd.
And away from the hype about cloned babies
mainstream scientists do also see
good reason for cloning from human cells.
They're hoping to treat incurable conditions
like Parkinson's or heart disease
by growing new brain or heart cells
cloned from the patient.
But behind all the optimism
lies a stark reality.
At the Roslin Institute,
the lab which made history with Dolly,
scientists have found
their success very hard to repeat.
For every one hundred cells
injected into eggs
typically only two or three
clones will be born alive.
Most will either fail to start
growing into an embryo at all,
or fail to implant in the womb
and in the few cases
where pregnancies begin
many of the cloned animals die
before they even make it to birth.
It can happen at any time
during the development of pregnancy.
Sometimes my colleagues
would see the placenta going wrong,
sometimes things would look perfectly normal,
you'd be expecting a live birth
within a few days and the, the lamb would die,
the foetus would die because of some abnormality
that you couldn't detect by ultrasound.
Then there was the strange case
of a cloned lamb
which began life
seeming perfectly normal.
We were very excited
by the fact that it was born naturally
and was essentially very healthy,
except for one thing
which was that it panted all the time,
just the same way that you and I
would if we'd been running for a hundred yards,
but all of the time night and day
and obviously my veterinary colleagues
took advice from other vets
and from the Children's Hospital
and tried any of the treatments
that were recommended,
but unfortunately none of them
were able to correct the condition.
And it wasn't just the Roslin lambs.
Around the world some clones were dying
of bizarre, inexplicable conditions.
In cloned animals
of all the different species
there've been an enormous variety
of, of different abnormalities.
In the kidneys, the livers,
the hearts, the blood vessels,
the skin, the musculature
of the, the body wall...
...heart defects, limb abnormalities
and facial abnormalities, but not...
...the newborns have been born
with their insides on the outside.
We know that they have immunological problems,
they have pulmonary problems, they have cardiac...
...within hours of birth
they tend to die...
...the musculature of the, the body wall,
the brain, the face. I think...
...some of them are able to breathe,
but only breathe if they're on oxygen.
Whoever heard of a calf grazing
with oxygen on its back?
Scientists had to get to the bottom
of the mysterious deaths.
They took the organs from clones
which had died and prepared tissue samples.
Pathologist Susan Rhind
was one of the first
to examine samples
from dead clones under the microscope.
What she has found is shocking.
These lambs showed serious problems
with their breathing
so an obvious place to start looking
was in the lung tissue itself
to see if there was any problems there
and if we look at a section
here from a normal lamb
and what we've got here
is a large airway
bringing the air down
into the lung
and if we can focus on this structure
here which is a blood vessel
and at this same magnification move on
to looking at the lung from a cloned lamb,
we can see instantly how different
they are from the normal.
We have a blood vessel
which is massively enlarged
and the size of this is really far beyond
what one would normally expect in a normal lung.
The more samples she looked at
the worse the picture became.
This next slide here
is too big to even put on the screen.
I mean this is, is an even
more massively enlarged vessel.
The lambs' hearts couldn't
cope with the task
of trying to push blood round gigantic
vessels 20 times bigger than they should be.
These clones had no chance.
It's not possible to pick up these abnormalities
by ultrasound and carry out...
For the Roslin Institute Science Director,
Harry Griffin,
the fate of clones like these should sound
a warning to anyone who wants to clone a human.
...told us that this animal was suffering from
a major cardiovascular problem that was untreatable.
We put this animal down
because we didn't want it to suffer any longer.
Now if any of you are tempted
with the idea of cloning a human being,
and I would ask Dr Zavos
this question,
given that sort of defect
what would he do with it?
All those experiments
that is done in animals today
are obviously done
on a hit and miss type basis...
But Dr Zavos insists
that long experience of making human babies
makes him a safer pair of hands.
...Dr Zavos has been producing
children for the last 25 years
and not one single baby,
abnormal baby was born ever
and we don't intend to have
one single child ever be born
from such an effort, ever.
Lambs are lambs, humans are humans.
Dr Griffin has to realise
what the difference is
and that's what the difference is.
Thank you.
The difference in this case
of course is that
in the UK and elsewhere
we're allowed to experiment on lambs,
we're not allowed
to experiment on human beings.
And the point that I'm...
Dr Zavos may be confident
but the more the scientists examined
different organs from dead clones
the worse the picture became.
They found a bizarre array
of deformities never seen in nature.
On the left is a cross-section
of a kidney from a normal lamb,
on the right, on the same scale,
are cross-sections from two clones.
These kidneys are shrunken
with much of their tissue missing
and there were other problems.
A normal lamb's liver is mostly
made up of healthy liver cells,
seen here in pink,
but in the clones most of the liver was made
of strange, unspecialised cells
that couldn't function as liver cells.
The implications for human
cloning were terrifying.
If a human baby born with these kinds
of defects were to survive at all
many scientists now believe it would
suffer devastating illnesses unknown to medicine,
but Dr Zavos and his Italian associate,
Dr Severino Antinori,
are confident they can produce
healthy human clones.
We have no intentions to step over dead bodies
or deformed babies to accomplish this.
I'm not sure
to permit to continue the pregnancy
if there is some abnormality.
And the prospect of having
an abnormal child
is not enough to deter people
desperate for a family.
Couples like Desirée and Matthew seem to have
no idea how profound the problems might be.
But even if there was something
wrong with the child
we wouldn't toss the child away.
We'd both still raise it to the best
of our ability and treat it as a normal child.
I would be like, me,
if I could get pregnant myself
and we found out
at five months that it,
you know it didn't have
an arm or a leg or something,
I mean then telling us we could abort it
I don't really think we would.
I don't see us being that type
of people, you know.
We created it we're going,
you know it's our responsibility.
But the scientists who had seen
the scale of the problems
knew they had to get
to the bottom of what was going wrong.
They tested many theories.
Perhaps clones made from adult cells
were just dying from premature old age,
perhaps cloning was causing
strange mutations in their genes,
but everything they looked at
seemed normal.
Many began to suspect that the problem lay
in the great mystery at the heart of cloning:
how could a single cell taken from an adult
make a whole new animal, or human?
We have a system which has evolved
over millions of years to make fertilisation work,
very effectively usually,
and what we are asking it to do
is something totally different,
so really we shouldn't be surprised
that it doesn't work very well.
In a way almost we should be
surprised that it does work sometimes.
The way we are made
is incredibly complex.
Our genes are like
the plates on a printing press.
Each gene is a template
that produces a message.
To operate they need
to be switched on
and when they're switched on
the different genes produce different messages
that tell the cells how to build
all the organs and tissues we need.
To make a healthy human
our genes need to be
switched on at the right time
in an intricate cascade
and crucially when a process is complete
they need to be switched off again,
but the bizarre defects in cloned animals,
like the massive blood vessels,
suggested that something was going wrong
with these critical instructions,
so researchers began
the quest to discover the problem.
The first clue was to come
from a scientist who wasn't doing cloning,
but was working in a related area: IVF.
For years scientists
had been puzzled by the fact
that some animals made by IVF
for selective breeding
grew dangerously large in the womb,
something that also happens to clones.
When Lorraine Young first set out
to discover what was going wrong
it seemed an impossible task.
To try and pinpoint
what was going wrong
was essentially
a needle in a haystack type exercise.
There are about 30,000 genes
in every cell in, in an embryo
and really any one of those
could be going wrong.
The answer to why the animals
were growing too big
could lie anywhere
among 30,000 genes,
but Dr Young knew of something
which might help narrow the search.
It was a rare disease in humans -
Beckwith Wiedemann syndrome.
Thelma was born with symptoms
of Beckwith Wiedemann syndrome.
It's a disease in which a vital few genes
that control how we grow go wrong.
When Thelma was born
she ended up being born
with a part of her intestines
formed outside of her stomach wall
and she required surgery
within one or two days of having been born.
Beckwith Wiedemann syndrome causes
dangerous errors in the way babies grow.
They're often born very large
with huge tongues
and other problems that have
to be corrected with surgery
and cells in the liver and kidney
can also grow out of control causing tumours.
All this is caused by an error
in the functioning
of one of a small number of genes
that control how babies grow.
As a result, too much growth
factor may be produced
which in turn causes the tumours
and abnormal growth.
Thelma will have to have
ultrasound scans every three months
until she is eight
to check for tumours.
Well we try to go into these screenings
very optimistic every time,
but you never know if it's going
to be OK until you, till the doctor,
you know, takes his look
and says it's OK
and you try not to think
about what it would be like
if they came back and said it's not OK,
that it means cancer,
you know, and you don't want
your child to go through that.
Now Lorraine Young had a hunch
that the same group of genes
that caused problems in children like Thelma
could also be making
the IVF animals and clones grow too big.
She began comparing the chemical signals
coming from these genes
in healthy lambs and overgrown lambs.
It would take many months
of painstaking work,
but finally she found
a crucial difference.
One of the genes she was studying
is meant to keep growth under control,
but Dr Young found it wasn't producing
strong enough signals
and when she analysed it
she found that something vital
was missing.
The switch that should turn
the gene on,
a tiny molecule
called a methyl molecule
wasn't where it should be.
Without this switch
the gene wouldn't work
and the animal would grow
out of control.
This observation shows
that loss of these methyl groups from the DNA
was enough to make the animals grow large
and this was our most important
result to date.
Dr Young had done her work
in IVF animals,
but perhaps the same thing
was going wrong in clones,
perhaps the abnormalities were caused
by switches like methyl molecules being disturbed.
To test this theory scientists around the world
began to look at tissue from clones
to see whether metal molecules had gone awry.
Like other scientists, Dr Zavos
had also read about Lorraine Young's findings.
We're going to begin doing human reproductive
cloning as early as probably 30-60 days from now.
I ... and see that as a problem,
and unless...
For him a problem found
was as good as a problem solved.
Horizon has tracked down a document
in which Zavos claims
he can actually make cloning safer
by screening cloned embryos
for the sort of errors Dr Young found
and only using ones
that look normal.
Frankly I think the claims
are ludicrous and absolutely irresponsible.
I find there's absolutely
no scientific basis for them.
It's poorly referenced and there's
no real explanation of how he will do things.
It just demonstrates a complete lack
of scientific understanding in my opinion.
Dr Zavos couldn't be
interviewed by Horizon
because he's tied in
to a broadcasting contract elsewhere,
but he claims that if the embryo has normal-looking
methyl molecules on its growth genes
he will assume it's healthy.
He and Dr Antinori believe that tests
like these will prevent many abnormalities.
We will check and complete the procedure
to monitor, to avoid 99% the abnormality.
But Dr Young believes that the problem doesn't
just affect the genes she's looked at,
it could affect any gene.
There could easily still be problems
in a whole range of other genes.
He's going to be missing absolutely
thousands of other problems.
I mean he's going
to be missing everything.
In the last few months Dr Young's
research has been backed up by other studies.
Around the world scientists
have published the first results
showing that cloning sometimes causes
vital methyl molecules to go awry on many genes.
These results have led some scientists
to a radical and devastating conclusion:
that cloning can cause random errors
in the switching of any one of 30,000 genes.
The clone may develop normally
until some key gene,
like a time bomb,
causes disaster
and they believe human cloning
would be just as risky.
The most likely outcome
would include late abortions,
the birth of dead children
and perhaps worst of all, the birth
of children which survive but which were abnormal.
And the risks don't end
when we're born
because as our bodies change
at key stages in our lives
we're dependent on genes
switching on and off at the right time.
Things can go wrong at any time.
There are some genes which,
for example,
are necessary to make
a child go through adolescence
and not really important
before then,
so if you have an abnormality
in that gene
the child might not become
a, a, a normal adolescent
and you could see failures
at, at any time of development.
That I think is what
we should anticipate
if anybody clones a person
with our present techniques.
But there are other scientists who believe
the case against cloning is hugely exaggerated
and that these early problems
will be quickly overcome.
To take those very early experiments
which look at only a handful of genes
and try to make some grand statement
that cloning will never be feasible in humans
or that it will be a very hard process
or to make any assumption of that sort
is unwarranted
given the very preliminary nature
of these studies.
Dr Zavos and his team also think
their opponents are exaggerating the risks.
Hello Dolly.
He ridicules recent claims
that Dolly herself
may have something wrong
with her brain.
Now Dolly was doing OK
until recently when we heard the news
and I was shocked Dolly does have an IQ problem.
For crying out loud after four
or five years old Dolly is, is stupid.
Now for the life of me
neither Oxford nor any other institution
has developed an IQ test for sheep.
Let's get serious ladies and gentlemen.
You cannot do that.
Of course I, I know about sheep because
I was a sheep herder during my early life
and I can tell you that I haven't met a sheep
that is, has got an IQ above minus 10.
And scare tactics are one thing,
the facts of life are another
and we need to stick with the facts.
What is a clone?
Mother Nature has its way
of doing cloning.
That is the identical twinning.
The embryo splits and gives rise
to two lovely children.
A lady called me...
Dr Zavos is right.
Nature already creates thousands
of completely normal clones every year,
but recent research has revealed
some remarkable cases of twins
who are changing scientists' view
of what will happen if humans are cloned.
Oh what a shot, that's right.
Ricky and Erica are twins.
It's always special for every father
to be in the delivery room for the first time.
It was exciting, very exciting.
She wanted a girl and I wanted a boy
and we were happy, you know, like...
Very excited.
We had what we wanted and...
we had the millionaires family
without the million dollars.
It was nice.
Because they were different sexes
everybody thought that the babies
were non-identical, or fraternal twins,
conceived when two separate eggs
were fertilised by two separate sperm.
They would be as alike, or unalike,
as any brother and sister.
This seemed to be confirmed when Ricky
was born healthy, but Erica was not.
She had some worrying symptoms.
Suspecting a rare genetic illness,
scientists did full genetic
fingerprinting tests on both twins
and what they discovered
was astonishing.
They're identical twins.
I guess they are identical twins, but they're...
But they're boy and girl.
But they're boy and girl,
so like you know the, what are
the odds of having identical twins,
boy and a girl - one in ten million?
I don't know.
You have to be a scientist to understand.
To understand that one.
With Ricky and Erica,
nature's intended clones had
turned out to be very different,
so what went wrong?
The genetic tests revealed
that the reason lay in their chromosomes.
Ricky and Erica started off as a single,
fertilised egg with an X and Y chromosome.
With an X and Y this embryo
should have become a boy,
but as the first cells divided
one cell lost its Y chromosome
so some cells began to form
which only had an X.
Then the embryo split.
One half had mostly XY cells -
this became Ricky.
The other half had only cells
with just one X -
this survived to become
a baby girl, Erica,
but it takes two X chromosomes
to make a normal girl,
so Erica is different.
Girls with a missing X have
a disease called Turner's syndrome.
...one, two, three, go!
Happy birthday to me! I know...
Happy birthday to you!
The twins are celebrating
their eleventh birthday,
but Erica is fortunate
to have reached this age.
She has had to have heart surgery
and have her ovaries removed
and as both twins approach adolescence
the future looks uncertain.
This weekend she's 11 years old
and it's creeping up on me
and I think about it
every day, the day I have to,
you know, explain to her that she's not
like every, every other little girl
and when it comes to having a child
he'll have to know that
she's... can't do it
like everyone else has.
Some scientists argue that
if making clones naturally
can result in unfortunate
genetic diseases
then man-made clones
will be at much greater risk,
but to others, making babies by any means
is always going to be risky,
so cloning is not exceptional.
The truth is that natural reproduction
is a very, very dangerous procedure.
We have abnormalities all the time.
We have natural miscarriages
and we have 3-4% of actual children
that are born who have genetic
abnormalities of one sort or another.
We can't ask for absolute
safety with cloning,
but we can ask
for a level of safety
that is similar to those
with other reproductive procedures.
Within a few seconds of birth
there was a huge, loud howl from Louise
and the baby had arrived.
23 years ago a healthy
baby girl called Louise
overturned people's fears
about interfering with reproduction.
Louise was the first test-tube baby
made by bringing sperm and egg
together in a dish.
Today IVF is routine
and Doctors Zavos and Antinori claim
that cloning will be just as safe.
Whatever the consequences are
you will go ahead with it?
There are not going
to be any consequences.
We think that we can,
we can hit as high as IVF success
which is about 30%
in the US right now.
But over the past decade
a new form of IVF has emerged
which is far more invasive.
In a technique called ICSI
weak sperm which could not
penetrate an egg naturally
are injected with a needle.
Until human cloning is attempted
ICSI is the only model we have
to judge how human cells will stand up to the kinds
of manipulations which cloning will involve.
Although ICSI has produced
thousands of healthy babies,
a small number of scientists
have begun to report problems.
Several have linked ICSI
to a higher risk of abnormalities.
Some of the problems are likely
to be inherited from the faulty sperm,
but does the technique itself,
which involves injecting DNA
into the heart of an egg,
cause problems?
In the US one team decided to compare
what happened to sperm and egg
during the first few hours after
normal fertilisation and after ICSI.
They saw some worrying differences.
These are human sperm
prior to fertilisation
and you can see
that they have this necktie like structure
around the equator of the sperm chromosomes.
(The chromosomes are in blue.)
During fertilisation naturally,
this necktie would be lost
at the surface of the egg,
but in contrast after ICSI
here is a sperm in the egg
and you can see that the red collar persists
and that the sperm
is not inflating uniformly
as a round balloon but instead
is constricted by that necktie.
In nature a sperm's DNA
would swell uniformly
ready to combine
with an egg's DNA,
but after ICSI they found
the sperm's packaging got in the way
and the vital sex chromosome
became trapped.
The implications for cloning are serious
because instead of injecting a sperm
they'll use the nucleus
of a completely different kind of cell
that was never designed
to meet an egg,
so the potential for this kind
of error is much greater.
Contrast that with cloning
an animal like Dolly.
Well first the mother's
chromosomes are removed.
We don't know what else is removed
when the mother's chromosomes are removed.
We don't wake the egg up
by having a sperm wake the egg up.
Frequently we use an electric zap.
I mean is, is electrocution
the best way to start off in life.
It certainly isn't the method
that's mirrored naturally.
But still Doctors Zavos and Antinori
claim they're on the brink of the experiment
that will alter the course
of human evolution.
Of course we're going to go ahead
with it, no matter what.
The infertility couples are the ones
that make those decisions,
not us,
not them,
nobody else.
We are considering 200 couples.
That doesn't mean that 200 couples
will be cloned immediately.
We will start with the first one
and we'll finish
with the two hundredth one.
So could they actually succeed?
Until they try it's impossible to tell,
but other scientists have already
tried to clone our close relatives -
Rhesus monkeys.
So far from more than a thousand attempts
to clone a monkey from an adult cell,
not a single one has succeeded.
The DNA has so fragmented
that no cloned embryo has yet survived,
but some believe
it's only a matter of time
before these hurdles are overcome
and that progress towards
human cloning is inevitable.
First there will be
a refinement of the technologies
that are being applied
to sheep and cattle and mice.
There will be clonings
that occur in dogs and cats
and they will be reliable enough
that actually people will be
interested in cloning their own pets.
There will be clonings
that occur in Rhesus monkeys
that will demonstrate
these procedures are feasible in primates
and at that point the risks
will be sufficiently reduced
that some group like the Zavoses
and Antinoris of the world
will leap in and attempt and actually
succeed at doing a human cloning.
And as the drive towards
cloning continues
more and more people are drawn
to seek this new way to change their lives.
I think I would say walk in our shoes.
For one week walk in our shoes
and then, and then judge, you know.
Be, be in our situation
and then judge us
and I can guarantee you
they will have a different judgement.
The reason why I condemn you
is for the same reason that virtually
all responsible real scientists
who publish real information
condemns what you are doing
and criticises what you're doing...
For now, mainstream science,
politicians and public opinion
believe that cloning humans
would be courting disaster.
...the reason why you should not
be cloning is because it's dangerous,
because it's unnecessary
and because actually it is damaging
our respect for human life
and the dignity of human beings
and you should be ashamed
of what you are doing.
But the momentum towards cloning
may be unstoppable.
We either do it right,
ladies and gentlemen,
or we don't do it
and those incidentally
that wish to ban this technology,
and I said this to the US Congress
and I will say that to you tonight,
they are not going to be the Neil Armstrongs
that would fly, that would fly us to the Moon
and walk us on it,
therefore we need to be courageous,
we need to move forward
and we need to develop this technology
in a safe, responsible fashion
and I think it is
the right thing to do
and we intend to do that.
Thank you.
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