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This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture.

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The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily

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the only ones to the mysteries we will examine.

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Biologists have patched together the genes of six mice to produce this single offspring.

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More astonishing is the mouse created from only one parent.

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One day, it may become possible to make exact replicas of human beings.

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The chance of twins being born is about one in eighty.

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The likelihood that they be identical is less than one in two hundred.

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Wherever they appear, they are startling and fascinating.

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But if twins are rare, the odds against identical triplets are astronomical.

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These boys are lucky to have been born in the twentieth century.

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Among primitive peoples, twins and triplets were feared and rejected.

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Mother bearing such an animal like litter was thought to be a cursed.

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One or all of the children were frequently killed.

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Today, such children are nature's oddity, but in the near future they could become a familiar sight.

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There's a good chance that science will learn how to create identical human beings, or clones, as they are called.

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In both intrigues and alarms people, there's a feeling that people created by laboratory manipulation would be less than human.

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A sense that something evil may be on the horizon.

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Biologically, however, clones would be much like identical twins, triplets, or quadruplets.

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These ten-year-olds form one of a dozen sets of identical quadruplets in the country.

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The boys do look remarkably alike, though there are differences, and more will become apparent as they get older.

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Their physical similarity and emotional closeness often blinds people to the fact that genetic identicles are separate individuals.

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They may look alike, but they do not necessarily think or act alike.

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Well, it's very close, and there's a very, very strong bond.

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And I just can't describe it to you very much alike, and then we also differ a great deal.

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Our personalities are entirely different, and emotionally, possibly my sister is the stronger the two of us.

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Physically, I say my sister is stronger than I am. She moves quicker.

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My sister does it in a very big manner and much more action, maybe a little more noise.

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This is Robin. He has a thinner face, and this is Ray. He has a wider jaws and wider face.

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Rich has a rounder head.

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They walk and run completely different, and then their body is different. It's three different kids.

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The Bearning Twins are one of two pairs of identical twin gynecologists in the country.

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I think I'm a little more sedate, a little more likely to let nature take its course, whereas my brother is a little more aggressive,

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a little more likely to rock the boat and get a little upset a little more quickly than I do.

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Perfocative, or maybe volatile, is the word that I like to use.

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Twins are not clones, but they are living examples of what clones could be.

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If we are to rise above the superstition of primitive tribes who killed twins, we must not think of clones as either less or more than human.

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Genetically, a pair of human clones would be the same as a pair of identical twins. They would, however, not originate in the same way.

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The conception of a normal baby begins with an egg from the mother, which carries her genetic instructions and with sperm from the father, carrying his genetic makeup.

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When the sperm fertilizes the egg, the genetic information from the father joins that from the mother, and the cell begins to divide.

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Occasionally, the cell mass splits apart at an early stage. The separate halves continue dividing. They become identical twins, alike down to tiny details of face, hair, and teeth.

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It is believed that a person's skin and other body cells carry all the genetic instructions needed to duplicate that person.

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The process of cloning someone would begin with any one of their cells and any fertilized human egg.

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The egg nucleus containing its genetic instructions would be removed, and the nucleus from the donor cell inserted.

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After implantation in any woman's womb, the altered egg would divide and grow in the usual way.

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It would become the younger identical twin of the original cell donor, his or her clone.

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All of this is theoretically understood. Human cloning may be possible. But for lower forms of life, cloning is a reality.

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Some orchids clone themselves naturally. Others need a little help from man.

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At the Rod McClellan Company, south of San Francisco, growers are in the business of cloning beauty.

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They cut a tiny sliver of cells from the shoot of a mature plant and put the pieces in nutrient.

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After weeks of constant agitation, the cells grow into green clumps.

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The clumps grow into orchid plants exactly like the original.

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The process assures the growers that every orchid plant will be healthy and bear top quality flowers.

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Cloning techniques are also being applied to trees.

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In California, the original stands of the giant redwood are rapidly disappearing.

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Researchers are helping reforest with a new breed of trees, faster growing, straighter redwoods with fewer branches than their ancestors.

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The breeding of super trees begins with the selection of the best tree in a stand.

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Twigs from the top of the tree are shot down and carefully gathered.

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Carbon copy redwoods are then grown in test tubes.

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Pieces of twig are planted in a special nutrient containing sugar, minerals, and growth-promoting hormones.

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Within a few months, a batch of little cloned trees is ready for planting in the nursery.

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In a year, reforestation can begin.

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In the last decade, cloning research has made awesome strides.

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Biologists use the cells of one axolotl, a large Mexican salamander, to create its clones.

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Eggs are taken from a white axolotl.

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Normally, they would be fertilized by different sperm and grown into different axolotls.

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But a stranger fate awaits these eggs.

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Their genetic information is destroyed.

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They will become carriers for genetic instructions from other axolotl cells.

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A spotted axolotl embryo becomes the source of these cells.

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It is picked apart into individual cells.

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What comes next is the very essence of animal cloning.

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The genetic information carrying nucleus of a cell is drawn into the pipette.

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The nucleus is transplanted into the unfertilized egg.

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Other cells from the same embryo, each carrying identical genetic instructions, can also be inserted in eggs.

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The results will be clones.

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The baby axolotls are born identical.

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Spot for spot.

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Man-made clones of a single parent.

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If cloning were achieved for man, a single individual could create descendants in his own image.

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Extraordinary people might be copied in hope of benefiting society.

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The process raises a frightful specter of individuality lost.

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It would be theoretically possible to produce an army of identical humans

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who might synchronize their brains, thoughts, and actions to become a master race.

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If human cloning became reality, a person could create his own younger identical twin.

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The prospect conjures up visions of a dozen identical prize athletes

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or a hundred facsimiles of some movie screen goddess.

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Human cloning, however, is not yet upon us.

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When biologists tried to use on mammals cloning methods developed for salamanders and frogs,

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they encountered formidable obstacles.

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Mouse or human eggs are delicate specks, much smaller than axolotl eggs.

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The operations of microsurgery can easily damage them.

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Dr. Clem Markert of Yale University is a pioneer in cloning research.

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His latest achievement is the creation of a mouse which has six parents.

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Starting with three pairs of normally mated mice, each with different coat color,

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Dr. Markert produced a three-colored patchwork female.

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This laboratory miracle was performed by putting together embryonic cells from the three matings.

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After joining, the cell groups synchronize, develop normally,

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and become one mouse instead of three.

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No one has ever cloned a mammal, but a few individuals at least have tried.

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And we're trying to develop the techniques for cloning mice right now,

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and there are two different methods that we can use in attempting to clone mice,

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both of which involve a kind of microsurgery on mouse eggs.

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The process begins with a female whose eggs have been fertilized in the normal way.

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Her eggs are collected and prepared for microsurgery.

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At this early stage, genetic material from egg and sperm have not yet mixed.

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The mothers and fathers genes are in two distinct sacs called pronuclei.

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Dr. Markert deftly removes one of the pronuclei.

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In the incubator, the remaining pronuclei replicates,

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restoring the normal amount of genetic material to the egg.

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It can now develop like any other mouse egg.

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A technician inserts the egg into the womb of a mouse who will bring it to term.

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When born, it will be a new type of animal.

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A female mouse descended from only one parent.

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But if the same steps were carried out for the next generation,

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science would produce cloned mice.

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If we repeat the procedure, then we would make clones of mice.

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And there's no technical or biological barrier to doing that right now.

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Experiments with single-parent mice are continuing.

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Within a few years, Dr. Markert expects the first cloned female mice to be made by this indirect technique.

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If cattle could be cloned by first making single-parent cows, the economic gain would be enormous.

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Dairy farmers could build whole herds of identical prized cows.

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Unlike humans, however, these animals have been bred to eliminate genetic defects.

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Human beings all carry a substantial burden of what we call recessive lethal genes,

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which if present in duplicate would cause us to die.

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So that if you began with a human egg and treated it the way we do the mouse egg,

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instead of it living and developing, it would surely die in nearly every case.

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Scientists, however, are working on another way to clone mammals,

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a method like that used to clone axolotl embryos.

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The second method involves putting a nucleus into the egg after you've previously taken its own nucleus out.

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This is more difficult. I can do this mechanically. I can insert the nucleus alright.

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The egg seems to heal up, but none of these have ever developed.

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What Dr. Markert is trying to do for the mouse has not yet been done for the axolotl.

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To begin with body cells from an adult animal and make an adult clone.

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The successful experiments with frogs and salamanders all begin with tadpoles and embryos, not adults.

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No adult animal has ever been cloned.

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But even if this barrier is hurtled, the road to human cloning presents obstacles of its own.

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The technical and logistic problems would be enormously magnified.

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I work with dozens or hundreds of mouse eggs, most of which are going to die.

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To try to do anything like that with human beings would be very difficult.

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The notion of cloning, especially cloning human beings, certainly agitates people.

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If one were successful in cloning, say, an adult man, all you would in effect do would be to produce an identical twin of that man,

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but of a very different age.

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Now there are thousands of identical twins walking around on the surface of the earth.

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They all constitute small clones.

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And to produce another set of identical twins of different age doesn't seem to me to be anything that should agitate people.

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Identicals, however, may be more special than we realize.

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Even if we were thousands of miles apart, I could feel something coming on.

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I'd pick up the phone and my answer would be right there.

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And sister would have her, she'd be ill or in some kind of trouble.

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And we can always feel this.

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We can read each other's minds.

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It's very strong, very strong.

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I think that they have the same brain thoughts, same ways.

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They come up with the same answers.

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I really believe that they think about each other the same thought at the same time.

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If there were four or five or six of us seeing that we twins are double-power, it would have been just absolutely marvelous.

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I think four or six would be a very good landslide.

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We have a veritable clinic and we have the whole town to ourselves probably.

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I'm not too worried about negative results from phoning.

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I think it's a good thing that we are able to improve the human race, if you will,

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and improve certain characteristics maybe that are desirable and eliminate undesirable individuals and characteristics,

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even though it may sound a little dangerous, depending on who calls the shots.

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Many people are afraid that if the phoning of human beings became possible,

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that the government would direct the process and produce individuals to the government's taste.

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What governments are interested in is the adult personality.

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If you were to clone individuals, you'd still just begin with a group of children,

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the same genetic makeup as some preceding generation of adults,

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but you'd still have exactly the same problems of trying to discipline them, educate them,

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change them, or make them into the kind of adults you wanted to make them into.

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One of the reasons why many people are very worried about the possibility of cloning human beings

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is that they suffer from the illusion that genes determine character, and that's just not true.

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Dr. Markert and associates are continuing attempts to clone mice.

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Their progress, manipulating eggs, has attracted new researchers to the field,

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multiplying the chances of success.

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The cloning of human beings could soon be within reach.

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If human cloning comes, serious questions will have to be faced.

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Who will be singled out for duplication?

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Who will decide how many copies to make?

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Geneticists believe that intelligence is in part inherited.

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By cloning talented individuals, society could boost the mental power of the species.

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It is a prospect at once frightening and tantalizing.

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Whether used wisely or not, cloning could profoundly alter our destiny in the universe.

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If achieved, cloning would create genetically identical individuals.

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But if cloning became a common method of human reproduction, certain types might be overbred,

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and variety is essential to the survival and evolution of a species.

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Unless carefully controlled, cloning could potentially lead us toward evolutionary disease.

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Unless carefully controlled, cloning could potentially lead us toward evolutionary disaster.