The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, a newsmaker interview with Vice President Gore, a Susan Dentzer report on breaking the genome code, and a Terence Smith look at the growing controversy over a new television program for Dr. Laura. It all follows our summary of the news this Thursday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: There was change at the top today in the Gore presidential campaign. The Vice President named Commerce Secretary Daley to takeover. He'll replace Tony Coehlo, who resigned, citing health problems. Also today, Gore announced he's doubling the size of his tax cut plan to $500 billion over ten years. We'll talk to the Vice President about all of this and more right after the News Summary. The Vice President's presumed Republican opponent, Governor Bush of Texas, outlined a plan to help disabled Americans today. In Portland, Maine, he called for spending $880 million over five years. It would help the disabled buy homes, and it would expand their access to jobs by helping companies buy telecommunications equipment. The leaders of North and South Korea ended their historic summit today. We have a report from Richard Vaughan of Associated Press Television News.

RICHARD VAUGHAN: The North Korean President, Kim Jong Il, bade farewell to Kim Dae Jung at Pyongyang Airport. It was the culmination of a whirlwind courtship during which the leaders signed an historic agreement. The two sides will set out to resolve the sues of reunification purely through the joint efforts of the Korean people. They also promised to reunite some of the many thousands of families separated for 50 years by the armed border between the North and South. The South Koreans rolled out the red carpet for their triumphant leader's return. The agreement will complete the remarkable transformation of North Korea from public enemy to close family. The sentiment was reflected in Kim Dae Jung's coming home speech. The President said, "I want to tell you that after visiting North Korea, I've gained confidence that the two Koreas will be able to reconcile and cooperate, so that we can achieve unification in the future." The President drove into Seoul in a convoy limousines. Thousands of people, many waving national flags, lined the streets to welcome him.

JIM LEHRER: The two Korean leaders also agreed to hold another meeting, this time in South Korea. There was no mention of a date. Palestinian Leader Arafat charged today that Israel isn't serious about peace. He spoke after meeting with President Clinton at the White House. He said Israeli Prime Minister Barak lacks the desire for a comprehensive settlement, and he urged Mr. Clinton to intervene. A spokesman for the President's National Security Council said this:

SPOKESMAN: We are not in a position to pressure them. We are actually in a position to help, one, as always understand the needs of the other, help them define where the real issues are and, in many cases, at the right time, you know, work to provide a bridge that can help them towards a resolution. So this is not about pressure that we are putting on either the Palestinians or Israel.

JIM LEHRER: Negotiators for the two sides ha been talking at sites in the Washington area. They face a mid-September deadline for an agreement. The Senate voted today to set the first national blood alcohol standard. States would have to adopt a limit of 0.08 percent by 2004, or lose some federal highway funds. 18 states already use that limit. The Senators rejected proposed federal rules to reduce driving hours for truck and bus operators. Both provisions were contained in a larger spending bill. They're not in the House version of the bill. The Miami relatives of Elian Gonzalez filed a new appeal today. They asked the full federal appeals court in Atlanta to order an asylum hearing for the boy. Three of that court's 12 judges have ruled immigration officials had the right to deny a hearing. The relatives said that ruling conflicts with Supreme Court decisions and federal law. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to Vice President Gore, the human genome code, and a Dr. Laura debate.

NEWSMAKER

JIM LEHRER: Vice President Gore is first tonight. He was in Cincinnati, Ohio, today on what he's calling a "Prosperity and Progress" Tour. I spoke to him from Cincinnati a short time ago.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Vice President, welcome.

AL GORE: Glad to be with you again, Jim.

JIM LEHRER: First, your announcement today that Commerce Secretary William Daley will replace Tony Coelho as your campaign chairman. Why the change?

AL GORE: Well, I'm grateful to Tony for doing a great job, and his health problems, as he told me late last evening in a telephone conversation from the hospital, are such that he has been strongly advised by his doctors to step down from his duties as campaign chair, and some of the specific conditions that he has are exacerbated by stress. He has to have a lengthy period with as little stress as possible, a liquid diet, and complete rest. And his doctors have said that's completely inconsistent with being a campaign chair, and I reluctantly accepted that conclusion, as, of course, he did. And he did a terrific job, Jim. He positioned this campaign to win the primary. He put together a winning team. He's positioned us for a great convention and a winning fall campaign. And I hate to see him go. When his health recovers sufficiently, if his doctors will permit it, I'm going to ask him to take on some limited duties in the fall. I hope that will be possible.

JIM LEHRER: How soon -

AL GORE: But in the meantime -

JIM LEHRER: Sure.

AL GORE: -- I am very proud that Secretary Bill Daley has agreed to step in and serve as my campaign chair. I woke him up about midnight last night, and we had a lengthy conversation, and I was very pleased that he agreed. And he's here with me in Cincinnati today, and he is starting the process immediately, and he's going to be moving to Nashville, and taking over as chair of the campaign.

JIM LEHRER: Just for the record, is there no connection at all between Tony Coelho's decision to leave the campaign and the investigation or the allegations about having to do with an expo in Portugal, 1998?

AL GORE: None whatsoever.

JIM LEHRER: So if the illness problem had not arisen, he would still be the campaign chair tonight?

AL GORE: Absolutely.

JIM LEHRER: Why Bill Daley?

AL GORE: He's a great friend, a great American, a known excellent leader. He's done a fabulous job as Secretary of Commerce. He did a great job in the business community. He's been a campaign manager before. I know him well. We've worked together. He is terrific. And I'm very excited that he's going to step in and take this position.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Vice President, the Associated Press, among others, reported this today as your shaking up your campaign again. Is that the way this should be seen?

AL GORE: No. No. This is a human problem having to do with a specific set of health conditions that has caused Tony to take the orders of his doctors, and that's the sum total of it.

JIM LEHRER: And it's specifically an inflammation of his colon, right?

AL GORE: That's right. Diverticulitis with some complications - Joe Berra's Disease - you'll have to ask the doctors about the other details, but what the - both conditions - Tony has been a champion for trying to find cures for epilepsy, a condition that he has had for quite sometime. And he has been a great champion for ending discrimination against Americans With Disabilities. But in combination with these other conditions his doctors said that the stress exacerbates all of them, and that it would be foolhardy for him not to get rid of as much stress as possible.

JIM LEHRER: Sure. All right. The Tony Coelho situation aside, Mr. Vice President, you have been satisfied with the way your campaign has been going lately?

AL GORE: Very definitely. We're at a stage now, Jim, when most Americans are not really tuned in to the campaign. That typically starts around Labor Day. And what's important about the campaign dialogue right now is the ideas that both campaigns are advancing. I'm talking about prosperity and progress and how we can manage our economy in ways that keep the economic growth going and keep building the number of jobs and the strength of our economy. And, you know, in just a short time, we're going to enter a brand-new era with very large surpluses reported that will extend out for many years to come. And these predictions will come true if we don't mess up the economy. The other side is proposing that we squander those surpluses before they even get here with a $2 trillion tax cut and a $1 trillion Social Security privatization plan. And I'm recommending instead that we pay down the debt, that we move Medicare off budget and tell the Congress, "hands off. Don't use that trust fund for anything except Medicare" and the same as we do with Social Security. And then let's have a savings incentive to give Americans a tax break for savings accounts and investments on top of Social Security -- Social Security plus, not Social Security minus. This will not come at the expense of Social Security. And then with $500 billion of tax cuts for Americans over the next ten years, we will then take on the bold challenges to improve health care, to improve education, to clean up the environment in ways that create millions of new jobs with the new national trust fund for taking on each of those three challenges.

JIM LEHRER: I want to go ask about some of the specifics involved in what you just outlined for a moment, but coming back to your campaign, Governor Bush continues to lead you in most of the polls, and they seem - the lead seems to be increasing over time. What do you attribute that to?

AL GORE: I don't pay much attention to the polls. Five, six months ago I was behind by 20 points. And now the measurement of the difference is very narrow. That could be interpreted as progress and success, but I don't take any more -

JIM LEHRER: Okay.

AL GORE: -- meaning out of the polls that show me gaining than the ones that showed me far behind.

JIM LEHRER: All right.

AL GORE: I think it just goes up and down, and I think that at this stage perhaps the most significant number out of the polls is one that I read this morning. Only about 15% of the people are really paying close attention to the election right now. So, what the other polls are measuring is not all that meaningful. In any case, the American people will make this judgment. And I have full confidence in their decision, and I'm looking forward to the rest of this campaign. I'm excited about it. I want it to be a campaign of ideas and not insults, debates and not ducking. I want to see the prosperity and progress continue and our country strengthened.

JIM LEHRER: You talked about prosperity. Are you not getting the credit you believe you deserve for the good economic times?

AL GORE: Jim, I think the American people deserve the credit for the economic success of America. It's their hard work that's produced it. Of course, there is more to it because the American people have always been hard working. They were working hard in 1991 when the economy was a disaster. And the difference in part is explained by the new policies that President Clinton and I put in place. I cast the tie-breaking vote and helped design the program, and the impact of the new policies has been to give the American people new tools they've used to unlock the potential of our new economy and instead of the biggest deficits ever, we now have the biggest surpluses. Instead of a triple-dip recession, we've seen a tripling of the stock market and 22 million new jobs and the strongest economy in the 211-year history of America.

JIM LEHRER: There's a new Los Angeles Times poll, fairly new Los Angeles Times poll that shows that 24% of those questioned said the technology industry deserves most of the credit for this prosperity -- the Clinton administration, 14%, and Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve almost as much at 10%. Where would you put the numbers?

AL GORE: I'd give 100% of it to the American people.

JIM LEHRER: So you don't technology, Alan Greenspan or even the Clinton administration deserve any credit at all, Mr. Vice President?

AL GORE: Well, the American people elected us and the American people have brought all these new technologies into the economy, and, seriously, Jim, I think that those who look at technology's role are right because clearly we have a surge of productivity. Some of the investments made some years ago in the Internet, in computers, the first personal computers came out of the Apollo program, the Internet came out of the Defense Department program, the information technology assistance from the High-Performance Computing Act has helped, the other investments have helped to give the American people the tools they've used to bring about this terrific technology revolution, and that's causing our economy to be a lot more productive.

JIM LEHRER: Let me read you what Governor Bush said about. Quote, the momentum of today's prosperity began in the 1980s with sound money, deregulation, the opening of global trade and a 25% tax cut, end quote. Has he got it wrong?

AL GORE: Oh, yeah, of course. Because we had a miserable economic performance in the 1980's, and you don't have to take my word for that. Just ask anybody on the street who went through it. We had the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930's. We had a quadrupling of our national debt. We had $300 billion budget deficit stretching out as far as the eye could see. Crime rates soared, social problems got worse. There was no plan to do anything about it. The policymaking process was paralyzed, nothing got done. And there was no hope in the minds of many people that the deficits would ever be taken care of. Every time the economy started to pick up a little steam, it drove interest rates up and it slipped right back into recession. What changed was the new economic plan in the summer of 1993 that every single Republican voted against and that passed by a single vote margin in the House and a tie-breaking vote in the Senate. When that changed, the biggest deficits were turned into the biggest surpluses. We balanced the budget. And now we've got the strongest economy ever in the history of the United States.

JIM LEHRER: Your second announcement of this day was your tax cut, the $500 billion tax cut.

AL GORE: Right.

JIM LEHRER: Before it was only $250 billion. What happened?

AL GORE: Right. The new estimates of the expected surplus are really impressive. I've always used conservative assumptions. That's one of the ways we've balanced the budget. That's one of the ways we've had fiscal discipline, but in anticipation of the new budget estimates that will be coming out soon, I have tried to start a national debate on the big choices that we have to make in this election year 2000. Some people think that the choices concerning the surplus are somehow less important than the surpluses... than the decisions concerning the deficits. I think that's wrong. I think that both are crucial to giving us prosperity and progress, and I'm proposing that we eliminate the debt entirely by the year 2012, that we give some tax incentives for savings and eliminate the marriage penalty and targeted, affordable tax cuts for education and health care and environmental protection. And then let's take on these big challenges of improving education, expanding access to health care, finding cures for diseases like cancer and ALS and diabetes, and cleaning up the environment and producing the new technologies that are going to be in great demand around the world in order to improve standards of living while reducing pollution.

JIM LEHRER: But no cuts in the basic tax rates across the board?

AL GORE: Expansions of the earned-income tax credit, elimination of the marriage penalty, tax credits for child care and after-school care, long-term care. The reason it doesn't make sense to have a huge $2 trillion or $1.9 trillion tax plan is that that....

JIM LEHRER: Which is what Governor Bush has proposed.

AL GORE: Correct. And even with the largest estimates of what the surplus could be, that spends way more than the most expansive estimates, and immediately puts us back into deficits. Now here's why that's important, Jim. One of the reasons our economy is so strong today is that around the world and here at home, there's more confidence in our economy. Investment capital closed towards the U.S. markets. We are seeing many more jobs created here because of a higher level of confidence that we've got our act together and we're making the right decisions. We're not going to squander our national wealth. And if we go right back to spending money that we don't have and pledging it before it even gets here and pledging in advance to spend far more than would ever get here anyway, then-- we're just announcing that we're going back to the old ways and going back into these giant deficits and instead of paying off the debt we're going to build it back up again. That would be the best way to guarantee that the surpluses predicted never actually arrived. So I think that we have got to continue with fiscal discipline and conscientious policy making.

JIM LEHRER: To change the subject on you, Mr. Vice President, the death penalty. How concerned are you about the new about the possibility of mistakes being made in the administration of the death penalty both in trials and in the sentencing and the convictions of these folks?

AL GORE: Well, I think everybody has to be concerned about the possibility that there are far more errors than was previously thought. Most of us who strongly support the death penalty have assumed that the mistake in judgments are rare indeed. But the record compiled in Illinois by use of this new DNA evidence seems to call that into question. Given the record in Illinois, I think the governor there was right to impose a moratorium until they can get the criminal justice system straightened out. If there were a similar record of error in the federal courts, I would support a moratorium there. I do not think the evidence supports that at this stage, but I strongly believe that DNA evidence should be used in capital cases, wherever it's available. For one thing, it's not only the tragedy of an innocent person being executed. It's also the fact that the person who actually did commit that crime is still free out there walking around. SoI think that whatever your views on the death penalty, you ought to be in favor of using this new evidence as broadly as possible to improve the administration of justice.

JIM LEHRER: Do you think there should be a moratorium across the board right now while this matter is investigated and looked into?

AL GORE: I don't think the evidence thus far justifies that. If the inquiries now underway should ever establish a record nationally that is comparable to what was found in Illinois, then that should be an open question. And the study by the... by Columbia University begins to pose that question, but I don't think that we have evidence now that would justify such a step.

JIM LEHRER: Is Governor Bush correct in proceeding with allowing the death penalty to be carried out in Texas?

AL GORE: I don't know the circumstances of the cases in Texas. I have not had a chance to review those cases, so I do not have an opinion on that.

JIM LEHRER: On missile defense, does the new arrangement between North and South Korea announced yesterday, does it reduce the nuclear threat from North Korea?

AL GORE: I hope it will. We don't know yet. The initial optimism is heady indeed. I'm hoping that it turns out to be a... the beginning of a process for reconciliation that will bring freedom and economic prosperity to the... to North Korea and eventually a reunification on terms that spread economic and political and religious freedom throughout the peninsula. If that happens, surely that will have a profound impact on the role that North Korea now plays in the debate over nuclear weaponry.

JIM LEHRER: If that should happen, would that diminish the need for a nuclear missile defense system here in this country?

AL GORE: Yes but not eliminate it because North Korea has been seen as the first of potentially several so-called rogue states that might have the capacity to obtain some nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to deliver them within the next 10 to 15 years. We are well advised to keep a weather eye on such threats and make sure that we can protect the American people.

JIM LEHRER: If you're elected President, you will proceed with the implementation and building of a nuclear missile defense system, correct?

AL GORE: It depends on the tests. It depends on the findings of the research. It depends on a number of factors. There are alternatives that have been put forward, but assuming that the technology is proven out, assuming that the threat remains real, assuming that the balance of advantage to the United States in taking the impact on arms control into account justifies going forward, then, yes, I would. But those are all factors that will have to be analyzed carefully.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Mr. Vice president, thank you very much for being with us tonight.

AL GORE: Thank you, Jim. Thanks for having me.

JIM LEHRER: Yes, sir.

FOCUS - BREAKING THE CODE

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, mapping the human genome, and debating Dr. Laura. Susan Dentzer of our health unit, a partnership with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, has the genome story.

SUSAN DENTZER: Scientists are on the verge of something many never expected to see, a virtual parts list of the genetic makeup of human beings.

DAVID BOTSTEIN: When I went into science, the idea that I would live to see not just a sequence of anything, but the sequence of the human genome, I would have thought you were all nuts.

SUSAN DENTZER: It is an achievement that some liken to having a window into the very essence of being human.

FRANCIS COLLINS: I think of getting the human sequence as rather analogous to figuring out what the score looks like for this incredible piece of music called 'The Song of Human Life.'

SUSAN DENTZER: It's also a saga of stunning advances in science and technology - paid for with billions of public and private dollars. The likely outcome is a revolution in medicine.

STELIOS PAPADAPOULOS: It is without limits because the ultimate limit of this activity is the cure of all ills for all humankind.

SUSAN DENTZER: All these experts are talking about the completion of the so-called "working draft" of the human genome. That's the catalog of more than 3 billion chemical units that make up our entire DNA. The event closes a chapter in a modern epic more than 15 years in the making. Among other things, it's been a tale of rivalry among researchers locked in a race to decode the genome. One contender is Francis Collins of the National Human Genome Research Institute, who spearheaded America's government-funded gene- sequencing effort. Another rival is J. Craig Venter of Celera Genomics, a private company that announced at a congressional hearing in April that it, too, had sequenced a human genome.

J. CRAIG VENTER: This is a very exciting milestone in Celera's history and in science. We're going to have now the complete repertoire of human genes, which is the beginning of the next phase of science.

SUSAN DENTZER: Just what does it mean to have sequenced the genome? Most of us know that humans have 80,000 or more genes distributed along 23 pairs of chromosomes like these. We probably learned in school that these genes determine many of our features, such as whether our eyes are blue or brown. But what we may not have mastered is how genes produce these attributes or determine the body's other functions. Here's how that works. Our genes, copies of which are in most of our cells, are made up of DNA. As diagrammed by scientists, in its chemical structure DNA looks like a twisted ladder, or a double helix. The rungs of the DNA ladder are made up of four chemicals, whose names begin with the initials "a," "t," "g," and "c." These chemicals, or letters, pair up, and a total of 3.2 billion pairs make up our DNA. We don't know, at least yet, what the vast percentage of the DNA. But we do know that a small portion of our genes function like tiny factories. In a complicated way, the "a," "t," g," and "c" chemicals in the DNA copy themselves many times over to produce the proteins that carry out most of the body's vital work. So when we talk about sequencing the entire human genome, we mean figuring out exactly how all three billion pairs of these letters are arrayed, in large part to make this protein- manufacturing process possible. Francis Collins says a whole new world of genetic research began to open up in the 1980's.

FRANCIS COLLINS: Some visionary folks-- some people called them dreamers, some people called them nuts-- began to contemplate the idea that we might, in an organized fashion, actually try to map and sequence all of the human DNA, not fifty or a hundred years from now, but in an organized effort maybe over the course of fifteen or twenty years. That was very hotly debated.

SUSAN DENTZER: For one thing, these were the days before much of the labor- saving technology used to sequence the genome was even available, such as robots or very high-speed supercomputers. Stanford geneticist David Botstein says the costs seemed likely to reach billions of dollars before the job was done.

DAVID BOTSTEIN: Many scientists, including me, had real doubts. But at thesame time, even the most dedicated opponents understood that actually knowing the whole genome was going to be in itself a very valuable, potentially revolutionary thing in biology.

SUSAN DENTZER: Botstein was among those eventually appointed to a scientific panel that drew up a plan to tackle the project. First, to gain more knowledge and skill, scientists would decode the genomes of simpler organisms like the fruit fly, that still had plenty in common with humans' genetic makeup. Botstein headed a project to sequence the genome of one organism, the yeast.

DAVID BOTSTEIN: The idea was to take advantage of the fact that evolution has been very slow, relatively, and to sequence a few simple organisms with very small genomes where the genes are much better understood.

SUSAN DENTZER: In the meantime, the hope was that the technology to carry out gene sequencing would improve and costs would drop. After the plan was hammered out, the Human Genome Project was officially launched. That's an international consortium of academic and other researchers led by the United States and Britain. Collins says the group's first task was to draw up a so-called map of the human genome.

FRANCIS COLLINS: If the genome is sort of like the United States, and each chromosome is a different state, it was to try to lay out where in fact are the major landmarks, the mountain ranges, the major cities, a few of the small towns.

SUSAN DENTZER: Literally that meant breaking all of human DNA up into sections that were roughly 35,000 letters long, then trying to figure out how these chunks were distributed along our chromosomes. With that job accomplished, Collins says the group turned to the tougher task of gene sequencing, or figuring out how each of the more-than three billion pairs of letters was arranged.

FRANCIS COLLINS: That is in many ways, you might imagine, a mind-numbing experience, and it is done primarily by automated instruments.

SUSAN DENTZER: In fact, by this point technology was advancing fast enough to make this sequencing possible. And it was about to take an even greater leap forward.

J. CRAIG VENTER: So we basically, per day here, sequence 100,000 to 200,000 samples, each one giving us about 600 letters of genetic code, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

SUSAN DENTZER: Craig Venter, formerly a biochemist at the National Institutes of Health, was running a private genomics research institute in the mid-1990's. One day he got a call out of the blue from a private company.

J. CRAIG VENTER: They had an exciting new technology, and they wanted me to see it, and they were also thinking of putting up all the money to sequence the genome, the human genome, and was I interested?

SUSAN DENTZER: With a combination of lasers and other high-tech tools, the machines could actually distinguish samples of DNA letter by letter, producing a sequence as long as several thousand letters in a three-hour run.

J. CRAIG VENTER: We spent a day looking at the prototype machines they had. By the end of that day, we had a plan to sequence the human genome within a two-year period.

SUSAN DENTZER: In effect, Venter and his backers had dreamed up a shortcut to sequencing the genome with the aid of automat sequencers, supercomputers, and mathematical tools. The company they founded to do that was Celera Genomics.

J. CRAIG VENTER: We reasoned that we could take the chromosome, break it up into small pieces, sequence the 500 to 600 letters at a time, and then use the computer to basically solve a jigsaw puzzle.

SUSAN DENTZER: In 1998, Venter's group approached Francis Collins and offered to bring the new technology and tactics to work on the Human Genome Project. At the time, the consortium's own sequencing efforts seemed likely to take another ten years. But in the end, Venter and his colleagues were rebuffed. So Venter and his new company, Celera Genomics, went their own way. That culminated in Celera's announcement last April. The company had met its own two- year deadline and arguably stood to win the sequencing race.

J. CRAIG VENTER: I think you'll find most people in this field will honestly tell you that would have been ten years away if it wasn't for Celera. Whether Celera is the first to sequence it or not, we made things go faster.

SUSAN DENTZER: Celera's achievement hasn't come without bitterness and sniping on both sides. Critics like William Haseltine, a former Harvard biologist who now has a private genomics company, point fingers at the Human Genome Project for having wasted time and money.

WILLIAM HASELTINE: We can now see how faulty it was by the virtue of the fact that a startup company could virtually complete the whole thing for one-twentieth the price, in one-tenth the time.

SUSAN DENTZER: Collins rejects the charge.

FRANCIS COLLINS: Every single milestone set by the Genome Project from its beginning has been achieved on or ahead of schedule, and for the most part at a price substantially less than the original projections.

SUSAN DENTZER: Meanwhile, the human genome own working draft version of the genome. How much it differs from Celera's will only be clear once the two are published scientific journals later this year and scientists have a chance to study them. Both sequences will also be available on web sites-- the Human Genome Project's on its web site, Genbank, and Celera's on Celera.Com. Still, Collins admits that much will remain to be done even after the working draft is released.

FRANCIS COLINS: It will still have lots of gaps, places where we just didn't have that part of the sequence, lots of places where we're not absolutely sure that that letter was a "t" and not a "c." So over the next couple of years we will be closing those gaps, dealing with the ambiguities, trying to resolve any of the areas that we weren't quite sure of.

SUSAN DENTZER: Researchers around the world are losing no time putting the new genomics knowledge to work. An especially fruitful area of research is looking for misspellings in genetic letters that can help cause disease. Stelios Papadapoulos is a New York investment banker specializing in biotechnology. He says roughly 25 of perhaps 100 or more genomics companies are trying to turn genetic discoveries into viable drugs and other therapies.

STELIOS PAPADAPOULOS: Each one of these companies is really going after a slice of infinity, and a slice of infinity is also infinite. It is the beginning of a very long walk toward identifying every gene, every important gene, every gene relevant to disease, and then finding ways to treat those diseases based on the genetic information, the genomic information.

SUSAN DENTZER: In fact, according to some estimates, 10,000 or more new drugs derived from genetic discoveries could be on the market in coming years. That's up from the several hundred new drug targets now being pursued by pharmaceutical companies. Dennis Henner directs research at the biotechnology company Genentech.

DENNIS HENNER: At Genentech in five to ten years, and probably most of the pharmaceutical companies, every project moving forward will have been touched in some way by this new information.

SUSAN DENTZER: Another company aiming to be at the forefront of genetically based drug development is human genome sciences, headed by William Haseltine. He says his company identified the lion's share of human genes five years ago.

WILLIAM HASELTINE: We have over 120,000 human genes. Now, whether that's a complete collection or not, it's certainly a very large collection. And the way I look at what genomics has done, is it's given us a splendid new collection of the body's own substances that we can use for medicine.

SUSAN DENTZER: Haseltine says human genome sciences is now working with major pharmaceutical companies to turn its gene discoveries into new ways to fight conditions like obesity and osteoporosis. Stanford geneticist Botstein says both the human genome project and Celera can take credit for helping to move the technology this far, this fast.

DAVID BOTSTEIN: What I'm most impressed with is the speed with which it all happened; that, you know, when humans put their minds to some problem, we can accomplish a great deal of good.

SUSAN DENTZER: Scientists are now awaiting publication of the full results of both sequencing efforts in scientific journals later this year.

FOCUS - DEBATING DR. LAURA

JIM LEHRER: Some activists are trying to block a radio talk show host from moving to television. Media correspondent Terence Smith has the story.

LAURA SCHLESSINGER: My number: 1-800-Dr-Laura, 1- 800-d-r-l-a-u-r-a.

TERENCE SMITH: Conservative radio talk show host Laura Schlessinger aims to provoke. The pop psychologist-- her degree is in physiology-- has been stirring the pot for years. Controversy has earned her the second-highest talk show ratings in the nation, second only to Rush Limbaugh. She is broadcast on more than 450 stations.

DR. LAURA SCHLESSINGER: So you think your mom's lying, and taking advantage of the situation?

TERENCE SMITH: Now Dr. Laura, as she is known, wants to translate that success to television with her own daytime talk show this fall, produced and syndicated by Paramount studios.

PROTESTER: Laura Schlessinger is a quack. She's a charlatan.

TERENCE SMITH: But protesters, driven in large part by gay rights groups, charge that Schlessinger is a bigot who uses the airwaves to spew anti-gay sentiment to some 18 million weekly listeners. The proposed television show has mobilized them in what they see as a culture war. The anti-Dr. Laura movement has taken to newspapers, and to the web. This site, tompaine.Com, calls her the "queen of mean," and this one, stopdrLaura.Com, the command center of the campaign, provides information about protests around the country. It even sells T-shirts reading, "Are you a biological error?" The quote stems from comments about homosexuality by Schlessinger, who has also described it as, "a terrible sadness" and "deviant sexual behavior."

DR. LAURA SCHLESSINGER: I'm Dr. Laura Schlessinger.

TERENCE SMITH: An orthodox Jew, Dr. Laura takes what she calls a "traditional" view of issues such as homosexuality, and her right to express them.

DR. LAURA SCHLESSINGER: Of course a society should discriminate. Of course it should. It should discriminate against certain behaviors. And man-on-man and woman-on- woman sexual activity is a deviant sexual orientation-- does not promote any of the

values set forth biblically.

SPOKESPERSON: I think for the most part, people understand the notion of free speech and religious persecution, when they say it, when somebody has strong, profound religious beliefs, that that is a conviction which needs to be respected instead of misconstrued or misrepresented as hate speech.

TERENCE SMITH: Dr. Laura also writes a syndicated self-help column, and has had four best-selling books, including this latest one with the provocative title, "Parenthood by Proxy: Don't Have Them if You Won't Raise Them," which critics see as an attack on working mothers. While Paramount stands by its plans to air the television show, Proctor & Gamble dropped its plan to sponsor the new program, and United Airlines announced it would no longer run ads for her radio show in its in-flight magazine. Television stations around the country are considering whether to go ahead and carry the program.

SPOKESPERSON: There has been considerable controversy over her inflammatory statements about homosexuality and women. Newscenter 5, WCVB, has been meeting with gay and lesbian groups who do not want the station to air the program.

TERENCE SMITH: Meanwhile, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council rebuked Schlessinger for what it called "abusively discriminatory violations of Canada's broadcast code." It is requiring stations that continue to broadcast her show to censor anti-gay comments, and broadcast statements on the council's ruling.

TERENCE SMITH: For more on the controversial Dr. Laura Schlessinger program, we turn to Keven Bellows-- her Vice President and general manager at Premier Radio Networks; and to Joan Garry, executive director of G;AAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, that is protesting her program; and to Lucy Dalglish, a lawyer who is executive director of the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press. Welcome to all three of you.

Joan Garry, explain to us just what you're trying to accomplish with these protests.

JOAN GARRY: Well, first off, I have to say that the notion of this whole debate being framed in terms of free speech is kind of ironic, because I, along with millions of people, gay and straight, are in fact expressing our free speech in the concerns that we have about this show. The issue for GLAAD, as it's an anti-defamation organization, is that this isn't about free speech, it's about defamatory speech: Some of the language you just heard, as well as some of the misinformation that Dr. Laura is putting out there. And I think it's also important to know that this issue started for us two years ago, not today with the protests, but two years ago with conversations with both Laura Schlessinger and with Paramount, to really inform them, educate them about the impact that these words are having on people who listen to them, and to ask them to exert some responsibility.

TERENCE SMITH: Right. But is your purpose to differ with Dr. Laura and her views, or to keep her off television?

JOAN GARRY: No, the purpose of our work here is to really hold up some defamation, defamatory language and its use, and hold it up for everyone to see, and really indicate that it cannot and should not go unchallenged, and really, to look at Paramount domestic television particularly, and to ask them, in light of the ongoing history of Laura Schlessinger's words, to really exert some responsibility.

TERENCE SMITH: But you have approached Paramount and said, "don't put it on air"?

JOAN GARRY: In both situations, both with Schlessinger and with Paramount, we found ourselves in a position where both of these entities have really not acknowledged the defamation of these words, nor taken responsibility for them. And without either of those situations from either Paramount or Schlessinger, we've really had no choice but to advocate that the show bepulled.

TERENCE SMITH: Keven Bellows, does that strike you as legitimate protest?

KEVEN BELLOWS: Well, no, because I was actually at a meeting at Paramount with Joan when GLAAD's desire was for assurances that, if Dr. Laura had a television show, that there would be many different points of view represented on that television show, and she was assured that that would in fact be the case. I think it's amusing that Laura, of all people, should not be allowed to be on television, when there is so much despair about violence and sex and basically the wasteland of television. Dr. Laura is the foremost advocate of morals, values, and ethics in America. And that's what this television show will be about, and there will be many different points of view expressed. So I don't think this is about fairness, I think this is about unfairness.

TERENCE SMITH: Lucy Dalglish, is it protest? Is it censorship? Is there a first amendment issue here?

LUCY DALGLISH: Well, there's a first amendment issue in the sense of people having the right to say what they want to say on the airwaves, whether that be someone from GLAAD or Dr. Laura Schlessinger. Censorship, in the legal sense, really only occurs when the government is trying to prevent you from saying something. I think that actions that GLAAD has taken regarding Dr. Laura is the way we in the American system expect the system to work, and Dr. Laura has a right to say what she's doing, and my organization, the Reporters Committee, would defend her right to express her views on the air, as well as we would support GLAAD's right to go to advertisers, go to viewers, and request that they not support. That's the way things are supposed to work in the United States.

TERENCE SMITH: So you would not support the idea of peremptorily blocking the show?

LUCY DALGLISH: Oh, by the government? Heavens no.

TERENCE SMITH: Or by the producers, as a result of protests?

LUCY DALGLISH: Well, if the producers do it themselves, it's not censorship.

TERENCE SMITH: Their business.

LUCY DALGLISH: It's their business, it's their show.

TERENCE SMITH: If you succeed, Joan Garry, in keeping someone like Dr. Laura, whose views you don't agree with, off the air, what is to prevent others from keeping someone who's views you did agree with off the air? Where does it stop?

JOAN GARRY: I think the important thing to note here is that what we're really trying to do here is to combat and eliminate defamation. That's what we're in the business of doing. When we started these conversations several years ago, that was what it was about, was about saying, "look, these are defamatory words. When you use the word 'gay' and the word 'mistake' in the same sentence, people make those connections." A parent whose son has just come out to him, hears those words, "gay" and "mistake" in the same sentence, and you tell me the connection that he draws there. These are the kinds of things that we feel are important to raise as issues, and we feel that media professionals absolutely have a responsibility. You think about someone like Laura Schlessinger. This is not an issue of Laura Schlessinger, private citizen. This is an issue of Laura Schlessinger, a paid entertainer. And it is our belief that she entertains at a price, at the price of putting an entire class of people in a very second-class place, and we believe that media professionals carry a responsibility, and in that situation, that Paramount has a responsibility to curb that.

TERENCE SMITH: Mm-hmm. Keven Bellows, Joan Garry has used the word defamatory. Is that fair?

KEVEN BELLOWS: No, I don't think so. I mean, the whole notion of Dr. Laura as a homophobe is just ridiculous. Dr. Laura was the first radio talk show host in America to take gay calls on the air. She counsels gay people to tell their parents, to make peace with their family, she counsels the families to make peace with their children. She actually had a call not too long ago about a man who didn't want to accept a house that his parents wanted to buy him because he was afraid that they were buying him the house to encourage him to get married, and he is in fact gay. And she said, "for heaven's sakes, tell your parents that you're gay. They obviously love you. They probably know anyway." This is not a gay movement against Dr. Laura. We have hundreds and hundreds of phone calls and letters and faxes from gay people who love her, who really know what she's all about and who say, "these people do not speak for us."

TERENCE SMITH: And yet she has made her views on the homosexual lifestyle entirely clear.

KEVEN BELLOWS: Yes, she has. But the same religion that instructs her that homosexual marriage, for example, is wrong, instructs her that every human being is made in the image of God and is entitled to love and respect and compassion, and she has said that all the time on the air. She reiterates that and repeats that.

TERENCE SMITH: Mm-hmm. Lucy Dalglish, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council actually took an action against this, sanctioned it. What do you think of that, and could that happen here?

LUCY DALGLISH: Well, they don't have the same system that we have. In Canada there's this voluntary organization, the Broadcast Standards Council. And the private broadcasters opt into that system and they agree to abide by a code of ethics, and they have a procedure where if you disagree with what they say or what a broadcaster is doing, you can object to it and they will come up with some findings of fact. And while this is not an arm of the government, my understanding is that it's sort of a quasi- government-sanctioned organization, so they can't keep them off the air, but it does have considerable weight. So if you're in Canada and you're a broadcaster and you're running Dr. Laura, there are certain circumstances where they're required to listen to her show first and then remove any speech that they deem to be "offensive" and violating someone's human rights. And that's not the way we do it here.

TERENCE SMITH: And it wouldn't happen here?

LUCY DALGLISH: No, not in a situation like this. Not through the FCC and other organizations. The government does not go around blocking speech.

TERENCE SMITH: Mm-hmm. Keven... Let me ask Keven Bellows -- what you think about the Canadian action?

KEVEN BELLOWS: Well, obviously we were terribly disappointed by that. But we understand that is their system, and I don't think that we really have a right to say yea or nay on that. We do not believe that anything Dr. Laura says is defamatory toward gays or lesbians, but however if the Canadian broadcasters code says that words that she uses are defamatory, then that's how it is. We haven't had any repercussions at all in Canada. Dr. Laura is the number one talk show host in Canada and continues to be, and continues to be aired on all of he affiliates.

TERENCE SMITH: Joan Garry?

JOAN GARRY: And I think the evidence, the Canadian decision... The evidence is really very much on our side of this debate. These are the kinds of words that really do reinforce prejudice and discrimination in this country, and I don't think we can ignore that. In fact, we can't ignore that, and that's really what our efforts have really been about. I think the other thing just to mention here is that Dr. Laura, unlike other talk show hosts, goes under the title of "doctor" as a... purporting to be a clinical psychologist, so it's not just like a talk show host who's out there chatting on the radio. This is a person who really understands, in fact, that her words do have an impact. She's out there attempting to shape the attitudes and behaviors of others and we have a real problem with that.

TERENCE SMITH: Why... Here's a question that seems to me at the heart of this: Why not leave it up to people to decide whether or not they like what Dr. Laura has to say and therefore either watch her on television or not?

JOAN GARRY: We are... GLAAD is a media advocacy organization, an anti- defamation organization. We believe fundamentally that media words and images absolutely have a profound impact on shaping how the gay and lesbian community is perceived. That is our mission, so our mission is to advocate for inclusive representation of our community, but also to look at defamation and hold it up and make sure that it cannot go unchallenged. For me, at the end of the day, if one person thinks twice before saying the kinds of things that Dr. Laura has been saying about the gay and lesbian community, then our work will have been accomplished.

TERENCE SMITH: Lucy Dalglish, doesn't Dr. Laura have many other ways to express herself? This is not the only medium, television.

LUCY DALGLISH: Oh, there's television, there's the Internet, there's books...

TERENCE SMITH: And she has the newspaper column and so forth.

LUCY DALGLISH: Yes, and I think Joan's group has done a marvelous job, actually, of taking advantage of the American system of free speech, by bringing out all of these points. They have been very effective in talking about Dr. Laura's credentials. They have been very effective in raising the profile of this issue, and that's the way it's supposed to work in this country.

TERENCE SMITH: Keven Bellows, has all of this protest and controversy had any effect on the program that you intend to put on the air? Will it be any different?

KEVEN BELLOWS: No, of course not. It was always intended to be a program that would be a discussion of the morals, values, and ethics of given situations or topics of interest in the news or things that are happening, and with a wide variety of opinion about all of those issues. That was how it was always envisioned, and it will be on the air in that format, and I say let the American people decide whether or not they think it is a program worthy of airing. That's the American way. That's how it's always been done. Let's keep it that way.

TERENCE SMITH: Okay, and that's the final word. Thanks very much to all three of you. I appreciate it.

JOAN GARRY: Thank you very much.

LUCY DALGLISH: Thank you, Terry.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Thursday. Vice President Gore named Commerce Secretary Daley to chair his presidential campaign. Tony Coelho resigned the post, citing health problems. On the NewsHour, Gore said the change is not related to polls that show him trailing George W. Bush. And the leaders of North and South Korea ended their historic summit. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening with Shields and Gigot, among others. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.