Deceptive Letter of Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures for the 2006 MO Constitutional Amendment 2

I received a pamphlet in the mail several years ago from the Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures. Unfortunately, it was a very slick presentation that the worst politicians would be proud of.It first asked if my family would have the same access to the same medical treatments available to other Americans. The initiative that the Coalition supported prevents the voters of Missouri from banning a type of stem cell research known as embryonic stem cell research by enshrining this as a legal right in the MO constitution. Having a good political debate on what should go in the MO Constitution is a good thing. Unfortunately, the Coalition was very deceptive with their PR campaign, and my fear that they would sucker enough ignorant voters to put this in the state constitution came true.

The pamphlet said that over 60 medical research and patient organizations support the initiative and had an endorsement from former Senator John Danforth (and even stated that he's pro-life, against human cloning, and an Episcopal minister). But it doesn't matter how many noses the Coalition counted in support of their initiative for PR purposes. Or why John Danforth's head didn’t explode from the internal logical contradiction of being both pro-life and pro-embryonic stem cell research. What matters is whether or not embryonic stem cell research is an ethical way of conducting research.

The pamphlet confused the issue concerning somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) and human cloning trying to make it sound as if they were two different things. This is slicker than a slick politician. SCNT is the way that scientists have cloned things. SCNT is a technique used for cloning.

Consider this source:

On page 229 of "Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry" written by the President's Council on Bioethics" dated July 2002 defines a cloned embryo as: "An embryo arising from the somatic cell nuclear transfer process as contrasted with an embryo arising from the union of an egg and sperm." Similarly, on page 233, SCNT is defined as the "transfer of the nucleus from a donor somatic cell into an enucleated egg to produce a cloned embryo".

The only way the Coalition could support embryonic stem cell research while banning human cloning was to ban a specific purpose for human cloning: cloning to produce children. Everyone seems to agree that we should ban cloning to produce children. But what they supported was cloning with a specific purpose to produce research fodder in the form of mass factory-like quantities of cloned human embryos to harvest stem cells from. Harvesting stem cells from embryos involve the deliberate destruction of those embryos. On a previous post, I have argued that this is unethical.

The pamphlet also stated that making stem cells in a lab dish is not the same as cloning a human being. That's very deceptive. They didn't mention the fact that to make those stem cells in a dish, you need to create human embryos through cloning to harvest the stem cells from. You create those human embryos by cloning them for research. Whether you clone to make children or you clone for research, you are applying the same SCNT technique of cloning. Cloning is cloning no matter what purpose you have for the clone.

The pamphlet also mentioned support for using leftover embryos from fertility clinics that are going to be discarded anyway. Researchers on both sides of this debate agree on one point: there are not enough leftover embryos from fertility clinics to fund the type of research that bioetech companies and some research scientists want. In order to do what they want, they HAVE to engage in a massive factory-like operation to clone millions and millions of human embryos. Many feminists are against this for that very reason. Where are all the eggs going to come from except from women?

The fact of the matter is this: adult stem cell research has proved more viable than embryonic stem cell research. That's why biotech companies invest in adult stem cell research. And it's also why biotech companies and researchers want the government to foot the bill concerning embryonic stem cell research (e.g. California). While the MO initiative wasn't looking for funding, I wouldn't be surprised if that is what will be on future ballots soon.