Chicago, Illinois – Executive Director of The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity (CBHD) C. Ben Mitchell, PhD, says of the passage of Missouri’s Amendment 2: “This is no triumph for science, it is a victory for dishonesty and confusion—a new Tower of Babel—where words have no meaning.”
While Amendment 2: The Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative claims to ban human cloning, it actually provides constitutional protection for human cloning, banning only the gestation of a human clone and thus mandating the death of any human clones that are produced.
This was accomplished by using a definition of human cloning that is intentionally deceptive. In humans, the cloning procedure, Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer or SCNT, combines a woman’s egg with the nucleus of a body (or somatic) cell. The result is a human embryo, which will then be destroyed for highly speculative research.
Backers of Amendment 2 claimed this is not “cloning,” but practically every scientific authority disagrees with them. Amendment 2 authorizes the creation of human embryos using the SCNT procedure—that is by cloning—in order to destroy them.
Having recognized the dangers of exactly this kind of human cloning, Canada and a number of European countries have outlawed it. Now the citizens of Missouri have been tricked into protecting it constitutionally.
“Missouri voters have sown the wind and they will reap the whirlwind,” says Mitchell. “You cannot sow the seeds of immorality into the Constitution of the state and not harvest a whirlwind of problems in the future.”
We applaud Missourians Against Human Cloning and other pro-life organizations for their extraordinary efforts. The narrow defeat shows that education is crucial. Many of those who supported Amendment 2 just couldn't see through the fog created by the politicians.
