CWA OF MO SUPPORTS CLONING BAN
Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred and you are that temple. (1 Corinthians 3:16)
Missouri lawmakers who are wrestling with the issue of a human cloning ban should be aware that President Bush plans to pursue stricter limits on human embryo research. Mr. Bush reiterated his stand to support the most vulnerable in society in his State of the Union address. President Bush said: “I will work with Congress to ensure that human embryos are not created for experimentation or grown for body parts, and that human life is never bought and sold as a commodity.”
Creating a cloned embryo by a method without a fertilization of a sperm is called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). Human cloning creates human life. If it wasn't human life being cloned through SCNT, then the biotech industry would not be interested in it as a possible gateway to cures for human diseases. Some Missouri legislators are having difficulty understanding that this method does indeed produce human life.
HUMAN CLONING CREATES A HUMAN LIFE
Cloning advocates want you to believe that there are two kinds of human cloning, therapeutic cloning used for restorative therapies and for use in medical research, and reproductive cloning for the purpose of bringing a cloned baby to birth. This distinction of terms is misleading. All human cloning creates human life. Somatic cell nuclear transfer is the process by which a cloned human embryo is produced. Scientists take a donor egg from a female of child bearing age place it in a dish where the nucleus of the egg, with its 23 chromosomes, is removed leaving a little mitochondrial DNA material in the egg. Then, a human somatic cell (containing all 46 chromosomes), like a skin cell, is selected from a donor. The nucleus is removed from the skin cell and inserted into the empty egg. Next, this genetically modified egg is stimulated with a small electrical current or chemicals and the egg begins to divide just like a normal egg fertilized by a male sperm. If implanted in a woman's womb and gestated, the result will be a born cloned human baby. This growing human life, however, is only allowed to live for a few days. Finally the human embryo is destroyed by extracting the desired stem cells it has produced.
RESULTS FROM SCNT CLONING
The embryo created through SCNT is biologically indistinguishable from one created by normal conception. In other words, if you looked at them both under a microscope you would not be able to tell the difference.
Also, if the embryo created by SCNT were implanted in a uterus and allowed to develop, in nine months, you would produce a real live human baby that cries, drinks milk, and creates dirty diapers.
If you doubt this, consider Dolly, the cloned sheep brought to birth in Scotland in 1997 using the SCNT process. Would anyone really argue that Dolly wasn't really alive because she was an exact clone of the donor sheep? Of course not. That would be absurd, yet it's equally absurd to argue that SCNT doesn't produce a new human life.
Finally, by what process of thought do we validate the existence of identical twins (triplets, quadruplets, etc.)? Because of the way in which each twin embryo develops, there is a natural “cloning” (human twinning) that occurs within the mother's womb with each identical twin sharing the exact same genetic make-up. It does not involve a sperm as an immediate cause of reproduction, but rather it is a naturally occurring form of human cloning. One twin begins its existence immediately at fertilization; however, the second twin doesn't begin to exist until after splitting from the first twin. Furthermore, cloning by twinning is used as an in vitro fertilization technique for patients needing treatments for infertility. This cloning process is used to asexually reproduce human twins and triplets which are then implanted into the woman's uterus, carried to term and are born. Are they not human beings because they were not reproduced using sperm? The answer is obvious.
STEM CELL CURES IN THE NEAR FUTURE?
There are two strains of stem cells at issue: adult stem-cells (ASC) and embryonic stem- cells (ESC). SCNT scientists hope to use ESC to develop medical therapies. By harvesting stem cells from the cloned embryo, they hope to cure or develop treatments for cases of incurable human disease. The created embryo, as we have seen, always dies in the SCNT process. A budding life sacrificed to cure or treat someone's disease. How many embryos will have to die before just one cure or treatment is found?
However, not all stem-cell research involves cloning. ASC research actually holds greater promise for cures from diseases and spinal cord injuries. Because many types of human cells cannot regenerate and repair themselves, many suffer from debilitating conditions. Because stem cells can become virtually any cell in the body, it has become a favored specialty for scientific experiments to replace damaged cells with adult stem cells from the healthy tissue of patients. Some Missouri legislators are having difficulty understanding that adult stem cell research is really where ethical researchers are finding success. ASCs are found in a number of places in the human body, even in fat! Scientists have been successfully harvesting these stem cells and using them to regenerate healthy tissue which replaces the damaged tissues. By this method, no lives are sacrificed for elusive cures or treatments and there is no problem with the body exhibiting cell rejection.
The Missouri Senate Judiciary Committee held a cloning hearing on February 7, 2005, at which David Prentice, a Georgetown University researcher, spoke in favor of the cloning ban bill and told committee members, “Embryonic stem-cells are unlikely to be of clinical use, and this issue is ethically contentious.” Author Wesley J. Smith, a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, stated that embryologists, members of the National Institute of Health and the President's Council on Bioethics all agree that the newly created embryo (blastocyst) is human life at its earliest stage.
Currently in Jefferson City, there is tremendous pressure from some in the biotech business, medical community, and academic circles on pro-life state lawmakers to abandon their pro-life principles and to allow destruction of innocent human life through SCNT cloning procedures and embryonic stem-cell research.
A cloning ban is necessary in Missouri because there are anti-life groups willing to experiment with human cloning by using the produced tiny human entity for laboratory material. Biotech controversy arises when researchers expect government grants to finance their scientific ambitions. These researchers do not want to be restricted by law in their experiments with human life through SCNT cloning. It is far more financially profitable to secure a patent on a newly cloned human cell process than to use the patient's own stem cells for a cure. To these scientists, the notion of a universal moral law is primitive. Moreover, many biotech scientists want no social or moral restraints placed upon them. They perceive science as not only just a means for obtaining knowledge to promote the general good but as an end in itself.
State Senator John Loudon has stated, “This is a pivotal moment for our society. Will we allow scientists to bully us into drawing ethical boundary lines where one small group of researchers wants it or will the people through their elected officials retain the right to set limits?”
Author and special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture, Wesley J. Smith logically concludes, on page 173, in his book, Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World, “But if we decide to sacrifice the sanctity/equality of human life on the altar of biotechnological power, if we diminish or abandon our belief in the intrinsic value of human life as an objective good, if we hand over judgments about human worth to the subjective opinion of those with political power, then we have started down the slope.”
If one has a Biblical world view, this issue is no more complicated than understanding that some things are always right and some things are just wrong.
URGENT ACTION ITEM: On November 14, Secretary of State Robin Carnahan certified the official ballot title for the stem cell initiative petition. This petition purports to ban human cloning while in fact, it gives constitutional protection to the creation of human embryos through the process of SCNT and also prevents the opportunity for local and state governments to deny funds for research done on cloned human embryos.
Missourians Against Human Cloning filed suit against the Secretary of State in December to demand more honest wording in the ballot title. The full text of the proposition needs to be posted at the polling place, but just the ballot wording is on the actual ballot. The ballot wording does indicate that the proposal would ban human cloning but does not show the definition of human cloning as defined by the actual wording in the amendment. The actual wording in the amendment defines cloning as the implantation of the cloned embryo in a uterus. It does not ban the creation of a cloned human embryos. See our Web site for these items and our explanation on the cloning initiative.
Judge Byron Kinder ruled on January 19 that the wording is objective and deemed the ballot wording adequate. He charged the proponents and the opponents that they would need to make their case in the court of public opinion as we head to the polls.
The Missourian Against Human Cloning filed an appeal on Monday, January 30, 2006.