ISSUES RAISED BY HUMAN CLONING RESEARCH HEARING ...

72cloning process. And without that, I don’t quite understand howyou feel confident you can go ahead when there seems to be a lotof concern about it.Mr. ZAVOS. Well, there’s a lot of concern about other things aswell, not just only that.Mr. STEARNS. I know.Mr. ZAVOS. There are two—there’s data out there that—a variationbetween the two clones, it does exist because of simply of differentvariations in the environment that could bring about expressionof DNA differently. In two identical clones, and George Seidelfrom Colorado State University back almost 10, 15 years ago whenhe was splitting embryos, he was able to show that in cows thatthat diversity could come about because of that.Now as you may know, may not know, we do ooplasmic transfertoday in the humans to treat deficiencies of eggs of patients thatdo not have adequate documentation of mitochondria. We cantransfer mitochondria ooplasm from a fertile individual, fertile eggto a subfertile group of eggs in the human today and we are assumingthat the DNA that is bound or associated with the mitochondriahas no really any implications at all and that’s why we’redoing it.It is done today in the human in IVF programs today, we doooplasmic transfer.Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Chairman, can I have just 30 additional seconds?Mr. GREENWOOD. Without objection.Mr. STEARNS. Dr. Zavos, would you transfer human nucleus intoa non-human egg, do you think there’s anything wrong with doingthat?Mr. ZAVOS. No.Mr. STEARNS. There’s nothing wrong with it?Mr. ZAVOS. No, no, no. I wouldn’t do that.Mr. STEARNS. And why wouldn’t you do that?Mr. ZAVOS. Because that’s obviously, I don’t think there’s a competencybetween the two that can—I think various scientists thatdone that already, where they transfer mice into cow eggs andwhat have you.Mr. STEARNS. No, no, I mean a human nucleus.Mr. ZAVOS. No, no. I wouldn’t do that because that would besilly, mad science.Mr. STEARNS. Dr. Boisselier, would that be acceptable to you, totransfer a human nucleus into a nonhuman egg?Ms. BOISSELIER. No, I wouldn’t do that.Mr. STEARNS. Okay, thank you, Mr. Chairman.Mr. GREENWOOD. The gentleman’s time has expired. The Chairrecognizes the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Rush, for 5 minutes.Mr. RUSH. I think that it’s clear that we all appreciate many ofthe advances of the biotech industry has brought us and my questionis how do we ensure that human cloning, that a humancloning ban does not interfere with the safe use of biotechnology byyour company and others?Mr. OKARMA. Thank you for that question. It is a very importantissue to our company and to the field as a whole, so I think oneneeds to focus the language in such a ban to include very preciselyVerDate 11-MAY-2000 07:46 May 24, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00076 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 71495.TXT HCOM2 PsN: HCOM2