Transcripts:
Did you know back in the 2000s there was a huge debate about human cloning? >> We're talking about scientists creating human embryos for the purpose of exploiting them and destroying them. And there is no scientific evidence today that this is justifiable. >> Did you know there's no federal ban on human cloning in the United States? >> Strictly speaking, it would be legal to clone me, for example, tomorrow.
They're also making fake embryos for spare parts. >> But a brave new world where children are bred for spare parts >> and human animal hybrids for research. >> Dr. Zavos also reveals he's produced animal human hybrid. >> In this series, we're going to get into the most incredible cloning, conspiracy theories, and scientific advancements.
Now, y'all can watch these all in order. You can watch them out of order, but at the end of the series, we are going to put out the entire cloning series as one mega video, the mega series video. So, in this series, I'm going to cover the recent past, the present, current status of things, and how it might even get more interesting in the future.
>> Very, very high probability that the baby's going to be seriously abnormal. is just completely morally unjustifiable. >> Please do not send any hate or honestly comments of any kind to anyone mentioned in this video on behalf of me or yourself. Purpose of this video is to give my commentary and opinion on matters of public concern. Thank you.
>> What's the deal with human cloning? Like, is it allowed? Is it possible? These are questions that we will explore in today's episode of this series. It was three months ago that infertility researcher Panos Zavos predicted that his Kentucky based human cloning team would produce a pregnancy this year with the delivery of a cloned human being in 2003.
Now he's confirmed that one of the first of several couples willing to try the controversial human cloning procedure is from this country. >> We are considering 200 couples. That doesn't mean that 200 couples will be cloned immediately. They will be considered as such. We will start with the first one. Yeah. >> And we'll finish with the 200th one eventually, but it's not going to happen all in November.
>> Starting at the same >> We're going to spread them out and and do as many as we can. >> Allowing cloning would be taking a significant step toward a society in which human beings are grown for spare body parts and children are engineered to custom specifications. >> Is this legal here in the United States? Uh, it's my understanding you'll do the procedure elsewhere.
Is it legal in this country? >> Yes, it is. The the House passed the the bill, but the Senate never debated it and George W. never signed it. Therefore, it is legal in this country, but we prefer not to do it here. We have better environments and and conditions to do it elsewhere. >> As we discussed in episode one of this series, the celebrities are out here cloning their dogs.
Okay, this is taking place in labs in across Asia, but mostly it appears that it is going on primarily in Korea, South Korea and a little bit Japan, a little bit China. Okay, and so that so so the technology so to speak to clone a dog apparently exists. All right, this is scientifically accepted and noted.
And we did talk in the second video of this series about Dolly the sheep, a purportedly cloned sheep. 1996 apparently it took place and then 1997 they announced it pop culture explodes with a cloning obsession. But a sheep and a dog and a monkey that's not a human. Maybe there's something specifically unique about humans that makes us impervious to being cloned.
I'm not going to I'm not going to make you wait till the end of the video to find out that's not the case. Humans can be cloned. And according to some of the sources in this video we're going to get into, it's already happened. Humans made to order. Mothers giving birth to themselves. Babies conceived just so their body parts can be transplanted.
Come with me into the scary new world of cloning. The nightmarish stuff of science fiction has suddenly become a reality. The genie is out of the bottle, said scientists in Scotland earlier this year when they successfully cloned a sheep. And they weren't kidding. Using those same techniques, it's now possible to clone humans.
What's more, there are doctors ready and able to do it. >> I'm glad they say it. Look, one thing about 60 Minutes Australia, and it's been since 1999, at least. They'll say it when nobody else will. Shout out to the Australian. I love Australian. To be honest, I feel like that's got to be my cousins. Like to the scary world.
It is scary. It is scary. I'm glad she's not mincing words. It's scary. And she's saying it here. She's saying they've got but they yes human cloning is possible and they they do and they make him babies to order. >> Strictly speaking it would be legal to clone me for example tomorrow. And this is the place it's most likely to happen.
A leading IVF clinic outside of New York. Behind those walls, there are people with the technology, the ability, and the desire to genetically engineer human embryos to be the first in the world to successfully clone a human being. >> There's no doubt that human beings will be cloned. >> Dr. Jacqu Cohen, a leader in his field, simply needs the approval of his clinic's ethics committee to make history.
>> So, if I had the money, you had the permission, you could clone me tomorrow. Well, I wouldn't say tomorrow. It will take a year or two to we we could we could clone it probably in 2 years. >> What you're seeing here is an actual cloning taking place at the research facility in Scotland that pioneered the technique.
In theory, it's blindingly simple. Here, it's an animal, but just as easily, you can take a cell from a human. A scraping of skin will do. Then get an egg from a female. Remove the nucleus and fuse the two with a spark of electricity and ta you have an embryo. Implant the embryo in a woman and 9 months later you have a carbon copy of the person from whom the skin scraping was taken.
>> Oh man. And it does just remind me of like all the scary implications because anywhere where there's money to be made, there's a criminal and a grifter just sitting right there waiting to make that money. And it's like thinking about the desperation in somebody who needs a a heart or an organ transplant.
Like what they would be willing to do or not do. And maybe they wouldn't be willing to harm somebody, but maybe they would be willing to pay a few hundred,000 for a clone to be grown and grow a liver and just get rid of that clone or whatever. Who cares where it came from or what was just a skin cell? Oh, it gives me like a weird shiver down my spine.
>> To some, this man is a Frankenstein. To others, he's God. Over the past 8 years, working in secret, he's been leading a team into medicine's most controversial terrain. His aim is to clone a human being. >> For the past 8 years, and this was in 2000. So, this started in 1992. When was Shan Pitypuff Daddy Combmes Christian Combmes born? Anyway, just wondering >> by injecting the unique DNA of an individual into a woman's egg to give birth to a human replica.
>> Doctor, you have no >> His ambition has brought him into bruising conflict with mainstream science and ethics. >> This is a disgrace, doctor. 70% of these children, by your own words, would be born mutated. >> By his own words, 70% of the children would be born quote mutated. I rebuke. >> Since this experiment began, our film crew has been recording from the inside this man's journey of triumph and disaster.
>> It's very difficult for us to tell what may have happened here. >> You know, I paid60 or $70,000. Uh I guess obviously you ought to tell them do not freeze the embryos. >> The lady is on the phone. The customer is on the phone hollering at him about freezing the embryos. And that just brings me right on back to cryogenics and the people that have their whole bodies and their heads and things frozen so that they could be reanimated.
I mean, we're real close now. You know, somebody over there at ALOR has tried. >> What this man is doing could change the very process of creation itself. >> I am not God. I just only do God's work. And if I have a choice between playing God and playing devil, I'd rather play God. >> Okay, that was unsettling.
>> Take a look. In the eerie blue light of his secret lab, one of the world's most controversial scientists shows off his creation. Cloned human embryos that are genetic carbon copies of their father. >> Okay, here's the other thing, too. There's more. Apparently, there's more than one way to clone a human.
Okay? It's not only one way. They got they got ways where they take the genetic material from one, put it in a woman's egg. They got one where they actually combine it with the woman genetic material. They got one where they just used the casing of the woman's genetic material and put two other completely different people and now they're even developing a way to do it where there's two female genetic informations and like there's three total three total like contributors to this eventually born I mean is it a human if it walks like one
talks like one I mean I don't know what that would be I guess it would be but it would have like different some weird genetic stuff going on but they're talking about this like he's got to do it in secret cuz it's illegal or something and it's like there's many places where he could do this out in the open.
Why is it so secret? Is it cuz he's doing something with the clones that then after he clones the clones, he's not supposed to be doing with the clones? I mean, it it it does raise a lot of ethical questions. What's the law? You know, what's the law? I mean, we will get into that at some point. There are states that have clone and kill laws in the United States where it's like, oh yeah, you could clone it,but you can't you can't clone for to make a, you know, a new person like as a as a reproductive clone, but you could clone human tissues and embryos and
things to do other stuff for research and it's like, >> oh, my babies are doing well, look beautiful. >> Filmed for a TV documentary, Dr. The panotus Zavos implants 11 of the embryos in four women, one of them British, in the hope of producing the first cloned human being. The procedure is a criminal offense in the UK, but not in this undisclosed Middle Eastern country.
>> So this man right here in his lab, again, this is like the late '9s, early 2000s. He's cloning a clone that has only the genetic material of the father of the male contributor. like uh it's just like a male clone like male male like only male. It's like I don't know something like not to get all not to get all traditional or anything but something like something in me just feels like at the very least like to make a baby there should be a egg and a sperm. I maybe not maybe not.
I'm not even you know IVF and stuff that's fine. I'm not talking about that actually. Truly I don't know what IVF is. I thought it was like a a sperm and a OAM and they come together and then they make a at this point maybe I need to look into that but that's allowed. I think we have three very good embryos that could be in utero today and that if implantation is successful as well and the pregnancy is maintained as we say in the US we have a home run.
>> Why is this man with this accent like this saying as we say in the US we have a home run? Why he ain't saying like we say in Greece? Like excuse me you freaking weirdo. Don't ask we anything in the US whenever you are doing secret clone experiments of human embryos. We in the US would like for you to go back.
Actually, I think I speak for all of us. >> Dr. Zavos also reveals he's produced cloned embryos from three dead people, including Katie, who died in a car crash. He injected her DNA into a cow egg, though he hasn't implanted the animal human hybrid. >> Not only can 20 years ago, 25 years ago, they were in fact and indeed cloning humans, they were making cow human hybrids 20 years ago.
If you think it's a conspiracy theory, I wish it was. >> British scientists have condemned his work as reckless. Phoning of animals such as Dolly has shown the technique carries risks of severe congenital abnormalities. >> Something wrong with >> and be disgusting because he's sowing false hope to begin with. So the individuals who are involved in this experiment, and that's what it is, an experiment, may well not realize that the outcome is almost certainly going to be negative.
Um, and to put couples through that, in my opinion, is unethical. >> And like there's a lot of conspiracy theories that I've heard over the years and like some of them like easy to believe, some of them middle, and some of them are like you're never getting me to believe that ever, ever. You're just never getting me to believe.
And one of the categories of that conspiracy theory for me was that they would say there was these underground government labs that had half human, half animals, half human, half pig. It's the craziest thing. Ah, you're never going to get me to believe that. Well, imagine my surprise that I'm watching 20 years ago that the man put a little girl and a cow hybrid together.
Actually, maybe they got something underground. I mean, you're not going to do it above the ground. If you could go in a cave or in a tunnel to do it, you might. This man said he's doing stuff in secret. He was in fact and indeed making a human cow hybrid in his secret lab for real. He said I mean I didn't I didn't look at the experiment. It was a long time ago.
>> Dr. Zavos adapted a standard cloning technique for his human patients. >> A standard cloning technique. Okay, so back in 30 years, 20 years ago, there was already many techniques and some were standard. Okay, this is this is not new. He first took an egg from the mother and stripped out the nucleus containing 99.
9% of her DNA. He then took a skin cell from the father and extracted the genetic material that was injected into the empty egg and given a jolt of electricity to form a cloned embryo. Within a matter of days, the embryo would have grown into a ball of 32 cells which Dr. Zavos implanted into the mother's womb.
So far, none of the attempts has led to a viable pregnancy. But this infertile Canadian doctor, who wants to remain anonymous, says the technique is his only hope of having a child. >> Pretty much decided that uh probably I would be the first one to be clone, but then, you know, if it worked, then we might go on to have another child.
>> Despite almost universal condemnation, Dr. Zavos has vowed to continue his work. He says more than a hundred patients had contacted him in the hope of having a cloned baby. >> So back in the late 90s and early 2000s there were a few scientists who were the preeminent experts in cloning technologyand cloning science period.
And it would end up being the case that they would work together but they also seem to have fractured in their relationship at some point. Uh there was this guy in Italy. There was like an Italian scientist. And then there was this Zavos guy we were just introduced to. And then there was another man who came from the cryogenics society.
He was in the leadership over there. And he wanted to throw his hat in the cloning ring as well. Avi Ben Abraham. Okay. Avi Ben Abraham. And so in 2001, Ben Abraham along with this Dr. Zavos, the one we just saw in the secret layer doing the half cow, half human, along with this third guy, this Italian scientist who is an infertility specialist.
They announced their attempt to clone the first human. Now, they said they were going to do it in a an undisclosed country. >> In most of America, cloning hasn't been outlawed, but public hostility is such the professor is looking elsewhere. By next year, there could be a clinic where the first cloned babies will be born. In the next few weeks, Dr.
Zos will be flying to the Mediterranean where he'll be scouting out possible locations, which again, if it was not outlawed completely federally in the United States, I don't know why they would have to say, "We're not going to say it." They just said, "We're going to do it in the United States where it's legal." They were doing it in a quote undisclosed country.
Well, y'all, all I had to do was watch a few YouTube videos to figure out that the that the country was very obviously, you know, I'll just put the clip in here. >> Arrived in Israel today hoping to pave the way for human cloning. Here, Zavos met with one of Israel's most influential religious leaders, 104year-old Rabbi Kaduri.
>> All my appreciation. >> Despite widespread moral and ethical objections to human cloning, Rabbi Kaduri gave the effort his official blessing. >> There is a great wisdom in that process. God bless those who are doing it and uh I'm all for it. >> Kadori has a lot of political clout. Israeli candidates routinely seek out his blessing.
So today's stamp of approval is seen as a first step towards persuading Israel to legalize cloning. >> This is a great day for us and a great day for Israel. >> The man behind this weekend's political maneuvering is Dr. Abi bin Abraham, a wealthy and well-connected member of the cloning consortium. If he succeeds in his mission, he says the first human baby will be cloned in a fertility lab somewhere in Hifa north of Tel Aviv within the next few years.
>> Israel is the land of innovations and we're hoping that we'll be able to do it here obviously under the umbrella of the legal system. >> This is where he went to meet a local leader, okay, to get his blessing because you have to check in. It's it's not much different, frankly, than the Hoovers or the Eugene Henley's or the, you know, Big U.
You got to check in when you go into somebody's turf to do such a thing. And some some speculated he was doing it maybe right off the coast here and there or whatever. But oh god. Yeah. So we already made a video one time about the cryon about how to Walt Disney's Frozen Head and how Lima and then it got the al core and I mean oh my god that video was good.
Y'all need to go back and watch that. But one of the things that I covered in that video is that people are purchasing basically like parking spots in the freezer tanks of these cryogenics companies that are freezing their bodies or their heads or their genetic material in order to reanimate them in the future.
From what has been reported publicly, that has never actually worked. But that hasn't stopped people from paying thousands of dollars to have their, you know, matter and remains frozen. So this guy, he he was all up in it. this um Avi Ben Abraham guy and it kind of looks like he maybe was the plug into this undisclosed country. >> The procedure is a criminal offense in the UK but not in this undisclosed Middle Eastern country.
>> Like it looks like that's kind of like you know he was in with them. He's like, "Oh, I I can introduce you to I know a guy that'll that'll give you the blessing or whatever." Then they did get the blessing. There was also this press conference that they had. So they do this press conference and it actually was reported about in the Tampa Bay Times.
This was March 2001, the very beginning of 2001. Now this article has been updated in 2005. It was updated. So I don't know is this the Yeah, this is this is the updated version. But it says in a scientific forum punctuated by shouting matches, three doctors from the United States No, no, no. I'm going to correct that.
three doctors, one from Greece. >> If they choose to reproduce via this mode, they will reproduce via this mode. This is a freedom that they have in America. It is a a a freedom that is under the constitution and is is is guaranteed to them. >> One from Italy. >> If the law against the clone is is willbe approved, it will return the dark age like Afghanistan, like Iran.
Please, I am proud to be in America. >> And one from Israel. >> The man behind this weekend's political maneuvering is Dr. Ai Ben Abraham, a wealthy and well-connected member of the cloning consortium. >> Told critics Friday that nothing can stop their plan. Ha. Nothing can stop us to create not just clone, not just cloned humans. No, no, no, no.
Of course. What is it? What is it? What do you think? Take it, guys. Clone children. Yeah, they want they want to clone children. They want children clones. They don't want adult clones. Just think about that. Anyway, um they said more than 600 infertile couples have already signed up. The wouldbe pioneers disclosed little new information about their project.
First announced six weeks ago and spurned the idea of submitting to ethical or scientific oversight by any government. Instead, they spent four palemicfilled hours either belittling rival researchers and weary politicians or trying to convince them and a skeptical public that science is ready to move on to cloning humans despite a disturbing rate of disease and deformities in similarly reproduced animals.
Quote, "Some claim that we're moving too fast. They are right," said Avi bin Abraham again. Some say we're moving too fast. They are right. Stop pushing. Yeah. An American Israeli biotechnologist. You know what I thought about recently? What even is biotech? Like we say it so much. When you really think about it, it's like biology and technology together.
I think we have enough of that. I think we we can stop now. We have IVF and surrogates. Like, do we really need clones for adopting? I mean, there's also kids that don't, you know, they lost their mommy and their daddy and they'll have none of that. So, they need to adopt to go adopt them, you know. I don't know. I don't know, girl.
I don't know. He's like, "We are moving as fast as we can think, as fast as we can imagine, but we are proceeding with the utmost responsibility according to who?" Then there's this Italian doctor. He pipes in. He already had pushed the boundaries of fertility treatment by helping women become pregnant in their late 50s and early 60s.
He and this Zavos Greece guy, a Grecian reproductive physiologist who just left the University of Kentucky announced their project on January 25th, apparently becoming the first specialists in reproduction to publicly set the goal of cloning a human being. Now, they do have a a competitor for the first people to clone a human, and it's going to end up being a very bizarre alien religious cult, okay? Or a religious cult that thinks they might be aliens or getting messages from aliens.
Okay? Then came Dolly the ship and now nobody's laughing anymore. Everybody's afraid and we are laughing. >> Cloning is not illegal in most states in America. And the Raian movement has both the money and the scientific expertise. >> I'm wondering who actually cloned the first human. Somebody definitely did. You know, it had problems.
It probably was like a Frankenstein and maybe Mary Shel was trying to tell us something back in 1881. Okay, so they have this forum and they got into it with each other. There's actually YouTube videos. There's videos of this exact incident. And I'm just going to show y'all how fired up all three of these dudes were.
They were they were they were fired up. They were in rare form >> in the public saying that Severino and I cannot do this and they're basing all that on circumstantial evidence. You just can't do that. I want to remember professor professor Bush if the law against the clone is approved it will be the return the dark age like Afghanistan like the Taliban in Iran.
>> What do you think of the Italian scientist that wants to clone a human being this fall? As you know, I supported the anti- cloning legislation in the Congress and uh I'll be making a statement about my views on how life and science should uh interface uh when I'm ready. >> So, this press conference and all that, that was just leading up to them saying that they were going to try to do it.
Well, remember this guy right here, that Italian guy, the Italian fertility specialist. Look at this headline. Again, this is a headline. I didn't write it. This is from 2002. This is over 20 years ago. Italy's auntie Nori says he's cloned three people. So, we started this video, you know, is it possible? Is it legal? Is it allowed? Has it been done? Well, according to the United Press International News Analysis Insight May 9th, 2002, this fertility specialist from Italy says yes, he did it three three times. Three people. He shocked
observers a month ago when he reportedly said on the sidelines of a conference in the UAE that an Arab patient of his was 8 weeks pregnant with the world's first cloned human. He declined to elaborate. However, the staff at his office in Rome would neither confirm nor deny the claim.
This week, this scientist spoketo Italian television reporters to say that he has helped three women become pregnant with clones, a claim his office has confirmed. There are three of them, ranging from the sixth week to the 10th week of their terms. The pregnancies are progressing nicely. Staff members did not provide additional information about the three women, citing their rights to privacy. We live in hell.
This was in 2002, y'all. This ain't 2025. So he said despite the outrage from political and religious leaders over the possibility of cloned humans, the reason the project was top secret was not moral but social in the country. He said where these babies will be born, the children will be treated as monsters unless the climate of persecution changes. Okay.
Well, he did say, you know, one of the countries was the UAE, which I don't know. I'm not Muslim, but I would imagine like, you know, Allah probably like doesn't want clone babies. Maybe he does. I don't know. Somebody can tell me. Religious leaders were speaking out to you and saying this, "No, we're not doing cloning.
This is not what God has intended of certain religions. Where there was a Catholic one." So, people were really speaking out. And you see, you can also see how these guys are so good at propaganda because it's like you're persecuting the clone. If there's a clone baby going to school with your baby and it acts crazy and you have a problem with it, you are persecuting that clone and it's going to be seen as a monster.
Maybe it's going to be seen as a monster because something's wrong with it. I bet you if it just went to school and acted normal, like probably nothing would be wrong. Nobody would look at it as a monster. I don't know, girl. I don't know. I don't know. Now, a lot of people even back then were like, "He's lying, your honor.
" No, that's not true. He's not doing that. He just wants clout. I'll leave it up to y'all whether you believe it or not. But that leads us to the next topic that I want to discuss and we are going to do it in the next video of this series and that is right around exactly exactly I mean I'm talking like on to the date timeline of when one of these three clone babies would have been born.
There's a pretty crazy religious cult out here that claims that they might have one of those babies. That's all we have for this one. Make sure that you turn your notification on because I know you don't want to miss the next one. In the meantime, Fax and Defamation. Love you. Goodbye. I was reading IQ is 50% genetic and got distracted and I was just thinking >> thank God.
