patty kim (correspondent): lauren stanfordis a busy 13-year-old. lauren stanford: these ones are for, like,swim team. we won the soccer championships. that one i think i got for high honors. patty kim: and she's got another major project,keeping herself alive. lauren stanford: at 7:15, i check my blood.at 9:30, i check my blood. at 12:11, i check my blood. at 3, or 2:45, i check my blood.at 6:00, i check my blood. patty kim: lauren has type 1 or juvenile diabetes.she's had it since she was in kindergarten. unlike some kinds of diabetes, type 1 requiresconstant vigilance, counting carbs, checking blood sugar and adjusting her insulin pump.
what would you say is the toughest thing abouthaving this disease in your family? moira mccarthy stanford: it's just invadedevery corner of every member of our family. and everything that we're doing and she'sdoing is simply just keeping her alive. patty kim: oh, wow. so how does this work?what, what does this do for you? lauren stanford: it gives me insulin. it'sgiving me insulin all around...like, every 10 seconds i get insulin. patty kim: even with all her high-tech gadgets,lauren cannot control her blood sugar as well as a working pancreas. there's a needle that actually goes into yourarm?
lauren stanford: yeah, but then you take itout and it's... patty kim: after 15 or 20 years with diabetes,the danger grows, possibly leading to kidney failure, heart disease, blindness. lauren stanford: that's a glucagon. you needit when...if you have, like, a seizure. i don't want to lose my eyesight. i don't wantto have brain damage. i don't want to die of early age. like, who does? like, that'sthe only thing that scares me. moira mccarthy stanford: as soon as you change,you have to check your blood. now. patty kim: but many scientists say that hopemay be on the horizon. doug melton (harvard stem cell institute):i do think we can cure it, and...our research
has convinced me that that is going to bepossible. everything we learn says that it is possible. patty kim: doug melton has spent the lastseven years searching for a cure for diabetes. his work is personal; both his children sufferfrom the disease. today, he's optimistic about their future,thanks to a hot new field in medical research which we've all heard about, embryonic stemcells. these are ells that have the potential to become nerve cells, heart cells, bloodcells, any kind of cell in the human body. melton, now co-director of the new harvardstem cell institute, wants to turn them into insulin-producing cells so they can help diabetics.
so far, embryonic stem cells have been mademostly from frozen embryos left over from fertility treatment, and that, on its own,is controversial. but now, there's a whole new way for making them that's drawing evenmore fire. it has to do with cloning. in february 2004, scientists in south koreaannounced they had cloned human embryos and used them to create stem cells for research. george daley: i said, "wow, they've done it!i wish we had done it." patty kim: dr. george daley is a pediatricianwho also studies stem cells. george daley: the fact that that barrier hasnow been passed, i think, really motivates a lot of other scientists to say, "we cando it, too."
patty kim: now, when most of us hear the wordcloning we think of the cloning of people, the stuff of science fiction films, both scary. actor (clip from star wars): they are totallyobedient, taking any order without question. mike myers (as austin powers in clip fromaustin powers: the spy who shagged me): dr. evil... patty kim: ...and absurd. mike myers (as austin powers in clip fromaustin powers: the spy who shagged me): he is exactly like you in every way. mike myers (as dr. evil in clip from austinpowers: the spy who shagged me): call him
mini-me. doug melton: i don't know any credible scientistwho wants to do that, who's working on that. and i think that we, as a nation and as aworld community should outlaw that. there really is no reason to be doing that. george daley: i think it's important thatit's clear that we're not cloning organisms, that we're cloning cells, that we're tryingto create cells, not children. patty kim: so if they're not making copiesof people, what kind of cloning are the scientists talking about? well, they say it would work like this:
start with an egg from a woman's ovary. removeits genes or dna. then, take a cell, like a skin cell, froma patient and put its dna into the egg. this is called nuclear transfer. add a few chemicals and the egg starts todivide just like a fertilized egg. after a few days, it becomes a blastocyst,a ball of about 50 to 200 cells. if you wanted to clone a person, then you'dhave to place the blastocyst in a woman's uterus. a similar process was used to createthe famous sheep, dolly. but these scientists don't want that, so instead, and this is thestep that causes so much controversy, they would break down the outer layer of the blastocyst.
it's at this point there's no turning back.the blastocyst cannot develop into a child, but the remaining cells can become embryonicstem cells, ones with the exact same genetic makeup as the patient. the potential benefits are obvious to doctorslike leonard zon who sees a lot of patients needing bone marrow transplants. for two thirdsof them, there's no donor with an acceptable genetic match. leonard zon (children's hospital boston):how are you feeling? patty kim: even if a donor is found, the matchis never perfect. zon says, with cloning, scientists could, in theory, grow cells customizedto an individual patient.
leonard zon: if you used embryonic stem celltechnology, you might be able to generate embryonic stem cells that have the same immunesystem as the patient. you'd have less chance of rejection, and we would hope that there'dbe a less death rate associated with that. patty kim: with cloning, this little boy,in theory, could get bone marrow cells that perfectly match his body. but there's much more to cloning than custom-madetransplants. the thing that has scientists all over the world really excited is thatcloning could allow them to do something completely new and different: make sick cells. now whywould they want to do that? well, let's say you could take a cell froma patientã³someone like laurenã³create a clone,
let it grow in the lab until it's a blastocyst,make stem cells. then you could watch the cells as they get sick. that's exactly what doug melton wants to do. doug melton: just like abbott and costellosaid, "who's on first?" when you're watching these cells develop, one of them is goingto make a mistake first. one of the genes in the disease cell line is going to screwup. and we want to be watching it every minute to say, "who's on first? who screwed up first?"if we follow those cells in a culture dish, we can get at the root cause of the disease. patty kim: if you could learn how lauren'sdiabetes got started, you'd have a much better
chance of curing it. this might work withlots of diseases that right now develop invisibly inside patients. not just diabetes patientsbut parkinson's patients, alzheimer's patients. that's why, instead of just studying healthystem cells, scientists like harvard's kevin eggan want to use cloning to create stem cellsthat are genetically predisposed to a disease. kevin eggan (harvard stem cell institute):for certain diseases, it's true that cloning is the only way to do it. by taking cellsfrom an individual which already has that disease, it does allow us to make embryonicstem cells that we know carry all the genes that are required for that disease. george daley: this is one of the frontiers.it's enormously exciting research. it's very
valuable. it's a whole fresh approach. patty kim: nobody can guarantee that thisapproach will lead to cures, and even if it does, tangible results could be five, 10,20 years down the road. but right now, it's unclear whether these scientists will evenget started. father: this is the worst kind of scienceimaginable. patty kim: the catholic church, along withmany pro-life groups, has been a major opponent of cloning. father tad: making human life simply to destroyit leads us right down directly on the road to barbarism.
patty kim: the u.s. house of representativeshas voted twice to make all human cloning a crime. if the bill becomes law, anyone whodefies the ban could go to jail for up to 10 years and face a million dollar fine. the measure is stalled in the senate, butsenator sam brownback is trying to change that. sam brownback: the president is ready to signa human cloning ban. we've been blocked in the senate. with the last election, we'regoing to revive efforts to try to ban human cloning. patty kim: president bush supports some embryonicstem cell research but only on a limited number
of cell lines. he opposes cloning. george w. bush (president, united states ofamerica): we should not, as a society, grow life to destroy it, and that's exactly what'staking place. kevin eggan: i personally believe that thenuclear transfer embryos that we create are, in a sense, not new life. i would argue thatthat embryo that's growing in a dish, just like many other in vitro fertilization embryos,doesn't actually have the potential to go on to become an individual unless it's transferredinto the uterus of a woman who's willing to carry it to term. sam brownback: when does that human life'ssignificance begin? we know biologically it
begins at conception. that's when your lifebegan, that's when my life began. if i kill you as an embryo you're not here today, ifyou kill me as an embryo and research on me, i'm not here. so we know that, biologically. patty kim: when does a human become a humanwith all the legal rights and protections of a person? much of the debate comes downto this: a human blastocyst, smaller than a grain of sand. whether cloned or made from the union of eggand sperm, is it the same as a person? what are its rights? sam brownback: what is a human embryo? whatis a human clone? is it a person or is it
a piece of property? and most americans lookat this and they say, "life beings at conception." and if that's so, that, that life...there'sa sacredness to it, and we shouldn't be violating it. doug melton: often times this issue is couchedin terms of, "when does life begin?" i think of it more as an issue, "when does a personbegin?" and personhood for me is a process. the fertilized egg has the potential to becomea person, but it won't necessarily become a person. imagine you and i are sitting inan ivf clinic with my son and the fire alarm goes off. so now i have the choice of takingmy son out of the room or grabbing a freezer with 100 fertilized eggs, which would i choose?i think for me that emphasizes the difference
between a real life, a person who exists,and a potential. patty kim: both the blastocyst and the childare alive. some scientists say we're approaching a crossroads where we, as a society, haveto choose. what life do we value more? lauren's mom, moira mccarthy stanford, isa catholic and the parent of a diabetic child. hopeful that the work might lead to a curefor diabetes, she supports cloning for research. moira mccarthy stanford: to me, that ballof cells is the miracle of possibility. it's the possibility of becoming a human beingif it ends up implanted in a woman. it's the possibility of becoming cells to be put inmy daughter because she needs to be cured of diabetes. it's the possibility of becomingthe nerve endings for a spinal cord so someone
can walk again. it hasn't made its mind upyet of what to be, and, therefore, it is the possibility of all different kinds of life,whether it's new life or saving life. robert krulwich: that's correspondent pattykim with additional reporting by deborah amos.
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