Sowing confusion
08/27/2007
Most people regard human cloning as a process that results in the birth of a human being. In Missouri, that process is illegal and, since last fall, unconstitutional.
But nine months after voters approved a constitutional amendment that protects stem cell research conducted in Missouri if it's permitted under federal law, opponents have launched yet another drive to overturn it. Similar efforts failed in the Legislature earlier this year.
The opponents insist that voters didn't know what they were doing when they voted in favor of Amendment 2 last year. But their overheated rhetoric and misleading arguments threaten to sow more confusion.
At issue is a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer, SCNT. It's a technique that researchers hope might be used someday to grow human embryonic stem cells, although they have not yet had success with using the technique with a human egg.Advertisement
A group called Cures Without Cloning has started an initiative drive to redefine SCNT as human cloning, ostensibly making it illegal. The new definition is needed, a spokeswoman for the group argues, because "the Missouri constitution currently has confusing language which allows the same method of cloning that was used to create Dolly the sheep."
The comparison is faulty, almost like saying a trip to the corner grocery is the same as a trip to the West Coast, because both require getting your car out of the driveway. Creating Dolly through cloning involved much more than using SCNT to induce a sheep egg to begin dividing and developing. It also involved implanting that egg into a womb and keeping it there for a full term of pregnancy so a sheep could be born.
Taking such steps in connection with a human egg is illegal. Right now.
The painful irony of this new initiative is that, if it were to succeed, Missouri's Constitution would contain two conflicting definitions of human cloning. When a challenge arose, the state courts would be forced to decide which definition was valid — raising the specter of "activist judges."
The additional irony is that the supporters of this latest effort already have achieved their goal. On June 28, the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City announced that it would postpone a planned expansion because the unsettled political climate in Missouri has made it impossible to recruit top scientists in the field.
We should be encouraging responsible medical research, conducted according to strict ethical guidelines, into possible treatments and cures for deadly and debilitating diseases. We should be welcoming top scientists to help nurture good jobs and future economic development. Instead, even though voters already endorsed protections for embryonic stem cell research, we're allowing those those scientists to be driven away.
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On Tuesday, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center officially broke ground on a $5.25 million, 15,300 square-foot greenhouse expansion for its Creve Coeur campus. The Jack Taylor Family (of Enterprise Rent-a-Car fame) and the Danforth Foundation contributed a combined $3.5 million, while the MO Development Finance Board provided additional funding in the form of state tax credits.
AP reported today that a new special interest group, Cures Without Cloning, has filed papers with the Secretary of State's office to include a measure restricting stem cell research on next year's statewide election ballot. The new measure would seek to ban somatic cell nuclear transfer, a technique to generate new stem cell lines. Currently, such a procedure is allowed under last year's Amendment 2, so long as the resulting cells aren't implanted into a human womb.
This week, the