makes me really need to upgrade i think it's only the beginning of the. cyborgs human machines starting february first. this is the. monkey see monkey researchers in china have successfully cloned a pair of monkeys are humans next decades after dolly the sheep was cloned scientists in china have used the same technology to create two healthy monkeys a scientific breakthrough that's raising ethical questions about the future of

humans also coming up in the u.s. criticism is not stopping turkey from pressing on with its offensive against kurds in northern syria tonight we look at how turks at home or yakking to the campaign and the risks for those who dare to criticize. it's good to have you with us we begin with a scientific breakthrough in china that makes cloning humans just a technical step away now the baby monkeys that you see here well they don't just look at why they are identical researchers created them using the same cloning method that produced dolly the sheep almost twenty years ago but monkeys well they're primates just like us humans and now the question is being posed are we next. me. they might just look like two cute baby mechanics

but they also represent a breakthrough that has excited scientists around the wild the monkeys are close the very first successful clones of a primate using the method to produce dolly research is that the chinese academy of sciences presented them to the public this week the purpose of doing call me a monkey and use monkeys experiment to animals is really for the human health for the cure in a few meant izzy's there are many other animal models who told us you can use mice was widely used but there has been difficulty. in using that as animal model for the human disease because mice are very far away from humans the process took over a year and one hundred twenty seven eggs almost eighty viable embryos and it bevy of host mothers to produce the two babies it's hoped the clones could be used to studying diseases like parkinson's and alzheimer's research as say clones like

these could help them glean results that would be more pertinent to humans but this breakthrough also begs another question can we clone humans and should we the burial of cloning primate species is well over. in principle any primate including humans can be called but all purpose of produce of course use is purely for human benefit for medical purposes we see no reason of call of humans but despite the assurances it seems the debate around possible human cloning is once again on the agenda. lots of questions and see if we can get some answers janai here at the big table with me to my right there williams our d.w. science editor and to his right a familiar face here martin jack our religious affairs and ethics correspondent gentleman good to have you here at the big table let me start with you derek so if

we can clone monkeys it's a very short step then to cloning you when you with me theoretically yes i mean there are there there might be some differences in the protocol in the long term but actually they've been working for this for the last twenty years this was a very very difficult thing scientifically to overcome since dolly there's just there's some technical aspects to doing this kind of cloning that were very difficult to overcome and now they've overcome them now they're within our group of animals so they're in evolutionary terms these are very closely related animals so you can probably expect that most of what they did in order to obtain these these these phones would also work with humans it might not have to assume the drive that motivated researchers to keep trying and trying until they got it right with the monkeys is going to keep driving them until they get it right with humans yes but we should be careful with what that means i mean this is not necessarily mean that we're going to certainly going to have full human full human cloning even if that

becomes a technical possibility and this will be part of the ethical discussions to whether . cloning parts of human beings for instance for therapeutic reasons cloning a lever or cloning a kidney for somebody that he's having to undergo a lifetime of dialysis for and whether that would be the serval i think that that's a question that we can more or less uncertain the question as to whether you know cloning a full human being is desirable of course is one that i think that we would mostly have an intuitive reaction to this are of course i think questions that we as a society or the global community will ultimately have to decide and let's talk about you know the immediate positive side effects in this stare can mean for for doctors researchers this is good news isn't it. not for doctors immediately but for medical research certainly is sort of. being able to limit your study groups of lab animals to two individuals that are genetically identical is going to help them

really begin to develop compounds much more quickly than they have before because genetic variants of within a particular group of animals is one of the big things that you have to overcome if you're doing if you're doing a study into cancer if the mice all have different genomes they're all going to react differently to your compound you know in slightly different ways but if you have genetically identical animals that you can work with that's going to take out one of those variables that would otherwise be and i seem to do this is going to increase the chances in all types of medical sirup. cancer but even as martin said if we if someone needs a new liver growing that new liver all of these things now are within the realm of possibility that they are within the realm of possibility and one of the things that we were talking about actually in between shows was was that everybody is interested in growing livers everyone is interested in growing kidneys but we're not interested in growing as brains and that's really kind of the big fear that lies behind us we don't want a whole new people but we could we would be happy to have own new parts of people

and that's really the ethical dilemma that in some ways is facing this entire field of research. but what about alzheimers for example that is a horrible condition for more and more people around the world what would what kind of implications does cloning have then for possible therapies and treatments for it in the future maybe we're not talking about growing a new brain but when we're talking about developing new compounds that could possibly fight. what they would probably end up doing is they would genetically engineer primates like this monkeys like this to develop alzheimer's quickly so they could quickly have study groups of animals that they could then test compounds and that would be one of the one of the ways that it would benefit this particular field which also has of course ethical questions so we have a whole lot of ethical question is does and who is going to pose the questions he's going to offer answers and he's going to see that we stay within acceptable

ethical parameters here i think that the questions we're going to pose them collectively in i would say that they're being both sort of systematically i mean the scientific community and the rest of us that are sitting around sort of thinking of this issues and looking at it you know that answers will probably come from regulating into these and sort of government structures is to be sort of the most immediate the most immediate agents of regulation the question that we continue to have is whether we will be able to produce some sort of global principle for regulating. you know these stop in big chertoff sort of producing an army or producing sort of a large contingent of workers by a process of cloning is something that of course would become theoretically possibility and these are things that would depend presumably on the values of the different communities and the possibility of sort of the international community to come to terms of would how they're going to handle these must take not just an expense. possible but horrendous but horrendously expensive yeah yeah there's the

money factor there as well still lots of questions lots of answers for the future gentlemen thank you very much dirk williams martin jacques. thank you here's some of the other stories that are making headlines around the world a top u.n. official has mourned against myanmar as plans to repatriate the nearly seven hundred thousand injured refugees who fled to neighboring bangladesh he says it is not safe for them to return home and that members of me and mars military are still attacking roe hinge of villages but me and maher says it is ready for the returns to begin u.s. president donald trump has been meeting with other leaders at the world economic forum in davos switzerland before a sit down with israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu he said palestinians must return to peace talks to receive american aid trump is due to address the four tomorrow authorities in france have issued flood alerts across the country after

heavy rains in the capital paris authorities have shut train stations and rail lines due to the rising river waters some areas in the suburbs have been flooded the region has had twice as much rainfall as normal in recent months afghan officials have raised to forty the number of people killed in last saturday's attack on a luxury hotel in the capital kabul a health ministry official says twenty five afghans died in addition to fifteen foreigners taliban militants have claimed responsibility for the assault. in vienna the united nations has begun fresh efforts to jump start peace talks between the syrian government and the opposition the two days of talks in vienna come after eight previous rounds in geneva now even though a breakthrough seems as far away as ever u.n. special envoy for syria. remains optimistic meanwhile in the north of the war torn

country another conflict is raging on turkey's offensive targeting kurdish militia in the region of a three most turks appear to approve of their government's new war but speaking out against it carries risks our correspondent stan bowl filed this report on how operation all of branch is being perceived back home. more on every channel the military operation in syria as the top story on turkish television the tenor of the reporting they re petry all tick how critical the majority of tickets people it seems support operation on of branch in this tea house at least no one thinks the offensive is a mistake would be that the terrorists were looking for an opportunity to divide the country but we won't let them shove them of unused desertions us is all we have fighting against isis and other terrorist groups those who don't want to help us

should at least not stand in our way out of them an angel most often that no one army fighting in a friend and strength of it and i hope that with the head off we will take home a lick to reason that it isn't getting me to my new duty we will win i'm absolutely sure of it. turkish politicians agree as well and it's not just the ruling a.k. party that supports the offensive in syria opposition leader came out kill it stole says he also backs the operation as does meryl action are the head of the new party that wants to challenge president dredge of tired aragon in the next election she tweeted that she's praying for a glorious army the only party to condemn the offensive is the pro kurdish h d p. a former spokes person calls it inacceptable. you know could look at a lot of the olive branch has always been

a symbol of peace but now it is stained with blood it's us and now everyone is extending this olive branch to bashar al assad in syria who once used to be his allies it was not much but this operation is an attempt to massacre the kurds open the story up to statements like this one by jimmy lee chile are dangerous right now in the past days the turkish government has detained dozens of people including politicians activists and journalists for criticizing the military operation in syria the official charged terrorist propaganda. the journalist who knows servile colleagues who got into trouble with authorities over reports criticizing the offensive he says the government gave editors of turkey's leading media outlets directives on how to report patriotically. with congress i mean you know how all of the newspapers have similar headlines. this is actually government propaganda. for their journalists my sense of themselves to avoid trouble. unfortunately you can't

do you proper journalism in turkey anymore. but mahmoud a columnist for the government friendly daily said disagrees he says the government is not influencing coverage of the friend offensive. when it comes to national security every journalist bears responsibility that's how it is everywhere in the world. but that doesn't mean they're not free to report on everything but there are some media and intellectuals in turkey who can't use freedom of speech with hatred of the government. out of the offensive enough in looks set to stay turkey's main story for now the government has announced that it intends to further expand the operation. and finally a look at the unusual procession through cairo today egypt removed a mass of thousands year old statues year by fear of king ramsay's the second to

its new home the grand egyptian museum enjoy the ride will see you again at the top of the hour. same. cut. people. information. they want to express. on facebook and twitter updates in touch follow us.

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