COMPERE: Tell you what, Rowey, lots of things in the news over the last 10 days or so about the cloning of babies, and the Raelians, I think it is.

COMPERE: Mm.

COMPERE: And they reckon they've actually done it not once but twice, now. Is that right?

COMPERE: That's right. We haven't had any proof, yet.

COMPERE: Well, we haven't seen any - there's no evidence that we've seen...

COMPERE: No.

COMPERE: ...is what you're saying.

COMPERE: It does raise a lot of questions, and the Australian Medical Association has put out a press release today, saying that 'mini-mes create maxi problems'. Now, the AMA Vice-President, Dr Trevor Mudge, who's also a senior obstetrician, and Chair of the AMA's Ethics and Medico-legal Committee, he says the Raelians and other groups are reportedly attempting human cloning in the absence of an ethical or legal framework, or acceptable safety standards.

Dr Trevor Mudge joins us on line this afternoon. Good afternoon.

DR MUDGE: Hi, Louise.

COMPERE: Doctor, good afternoon. Great to talk to you. I mean, it just raises - this issue, I reckon, raises so many questions for each and every one of us.

DR MUDGE: Yes, I think that's right. There's an understandable horror, but there's also the ethical issues and the practical issues about the reality. I agree.

COMPERE: Okay, now...

COMPERE: Which we've never had to confront before.

COMPERE: No.

DR MUDGE: No. No.

COMPERE: Now, you're saying that they're attempting this in the absence of an ethical framework or acceptable safety standards. My question is, is it possible to create such a framework, and is there such a thing as acceptable safety standards?

DR MUDGE: I guess it begs the question of, acceptable to whom? And one of the issues that we have in the world now is that individual nations have lost their sovereignty over matters ethical and legal - that because communities vary in their view of this around the world, there is always going to be, somewhere, I suspect, in the world, where access to this sort of technology is going to be possible.

And that's something we haven't struggled much with. We have, I guess, already with termination of pregnancy, and the so-called abortion ship that was anchored outside Ireland...

COMPERE: Ireland.

DR MUDGE: ...last year, was it, is an example of that.

COMPERE: It's back again, I think.

DR MUDGE: Is it? Yeah. But I think cloning - the reproductive and genetic technologies involved in cloning are going to be a major issue for the world in that regard.

COMPERE: Something that came out of the brekky program last week with Carl Nunn, I think George even pursued it further with you is, when we're talking clones, now as we know, based on the information we have now, then, Trevor, you can only clone from a female?

COMPERE: No.

COMPERE: It becomes a female?

DR MUDGE: No, you can clone from any individual, and replace the fertilised egg's cell nucleus with the nucleus of an adult individual. That's how it works. It's important, though, to understand a couple of things about cloning. There are misconceptions, and I think a lot of the press from America over this hasn't helped much.

There's reproductive cloning - that's making copies of people - and there's therapeutic cloning, which is making copies of cells. Now, making copies of people is probably not a great idea.

COMPERE: No.

DR MUDGE: Making copies of cells, however, does hold out great hope for the future of lots of diseases and conditions in medicine.

COMPERE: So you can grow someone a new liver, or a new heart, or - is that what you mean?

DR MUDGE: Exactly. Yeah, that's right. Growing new livers or hearts. Although, you know, that technology is a way away. It is going to require sort of being able to clone cells. Now that's - that's ethically quite different, I think, to making copies of people.

COMPERE: Because you don't get to the areas we've been talking about in terms of animals this morning - soul, spirituality, that kind of thing.

DR MUDGE: No. But the other thing about even reproductive cloning is that, of course, it's not new. There are 17 million clones alive around the world at the moment. They're identical twins.

COMPERE: Oh, okay.

DR MUDGE: So that it's also important to understand that just because two individuals are genetically identical, doesn't make them the same person. If we were to clone John Howard tomorrow, we wouldn't have another Prime Minister.

COMPERE: Not necessarily.

DR MUDGE: No. That may or may not be a good thing. But...

COMPERE: But we know he has the ability. That clone would have the ability to follow that path...

DR MUDGE: The ability, but that clone's environment would make a critical difference to their capacity - to their final destination. Just as identical twins can often be very different individuals as adults, particularly if they're brought up in different environments.

COMPERE: So it comes down to the whole nature/nurture argument again.

DR MUDGE: Yeah. So I think that while we ought to be wary of cloning, I don't think that we need to consider clones to be Frankensteins. There are lots of them out there, and I think...

COMPERE: Well, well...

DR MUDGE: And I think this mini-me example is false. You see, a clone is not an identical copy of you, at whatever size.

COMPERE: But even with identical twins, they have, do they not, different fingerprints?

DR MUDGE: Yes, they do often have different fingerprints.

COMPERE: So...

DR MUDGE: So even the intra-uterine environment...

COMPERE: Yeah.

DR MUDGE: ...can make them different. Their environment of growth. That's true.

COMPERE: It's just that it is quite intriguing, though, Trevor, and it's great, dare I say it, after-dinner conversation. A lot of people are talking about...

DR MUDGE: Isn't it.

COMPERE: ...the mysteries associated with...

DR MUDGE: Well, I think that's a good thing, but I think a lot of the misunderstandings need to be cleaned up. Just let me say though just because cloning individuals is no different from identical twins, that doesn't mean that we should be doing it, at all.

COMPERE: Sure.

DR MUDGE: Like in any ethical framework, even a secular one, has to have respect for individual human dignity as a cornerstone of it, and there's no doubt that deliberately making copies - genetic copies of people - is a step along the road to reducing our respect for individuals.

COMPERE: Yes. If it's just science for the sake of science, or if it's ego driven, or power driven, you've really got to ask the questions, don't you?

DR MUDGE: Motivation is the critical part of it.

COMPERE: Yeah, that's it. Thanks so much for your time this afternoon, Trevor. It's been very informative.

DR MUDGE: You're very welcome.

COMPERE: See you Trev.

COMPERE: Bye bye.

COMPERE: Trevor Mudge, Vice President of the AMA, and Chairman of the Ethics Committee inside that particular organisation. It is just mind-boggling.

Ends