Amendment 2 legal battles don't reflect reality of lack of cloning

My distrust of clones began shortly after seeing "Jurassic Park." Chomped-off limbs, victims of cloned T. rexes and raptors taught me the dangers of this line of science. And that was before I saw "Star Wars."

In November 2006, Missourians passed Amendment 2, an amendment called the "ban on human cloning." It seemed the Show-Me State finally was taking an aggressive stance against potential armies of evil clones. The sad reality: The amendment was about preventing the blanket outlawing of stem-cell research. Pro-life groups across the state began an aggressive campaign to enlighten the public to this fact, including a commercial starring Jim Caviezel (you know, Jesus in "Passion of the Christ") saying in Aramaic (the language Jesus spoke), "Father forgive them. They know not what they do."

The real Jesus said that, but I doubt he was talking about stem cells.

I digress.

The amendment passed by a slim margin and really did not change any ongoing practice other than silencing a few nutty legislators who had tried in the past to criminalize stem-cell research. Nobody was birthing human carbon copies, which was how the amendment defined cloning. However, a line of stem-cell research that was allowed to continue was called Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer, the same technique used to create Dolly, the evil clone of a sheep. The horror!

Last week, Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia S. Joyce ruled that the summary of the amendment on the ballot written by the Secretary of State Robin Carnahan was "insufficient and unfair." I agree. The amendment was less about banning the duplication of people and more about protecting a field of scientific research. However, the bearer of the lawsuit against Carnahan, a pro-life group called Cures Against Cloning, is not trying to expose the true intentions of the amendment. Rather, the group is trying to spin a patch to the amendment that will use the same sci-fi fear-inducing rhetoric.

The proposed changes to appear on next November's ballot: "'Clone or attempt to clone a human being' means create or attempt to create a human embryo at any stage, which shall include the one-cell stage onward, by any means other than fertilization of a human egg by a human sperm."

This effectively would kill SCNT research in the state of Missouri, which is a bad thing.

SCNT involves one unfertilized egg with the nucleus removed. DNA from the patient receiving stem-cell treatment is injected into this egg and manipulated, essentially fertilizing an egg that can then grow into a blastocyst. The stem cells are harvested, an act that destroys the cluster of cells. Pro-lifers have called the method clone-and-kill, which is about as unbiased as me referring to the destruction of a cluster of cells in the prior sentence. Obviously, this is where the science gets tricky.

Embryonic and SCNT stem cells are harvested three to five days after fertilization. The blastocysts have no central nervous system, no cognitive thought, no form remotely recognizable as human. In fact, they are doomed from conception if they are not implanted in a human womb. To put this into perspective, nearly half of the conceptions that occur in a human body do not result in a pregnancy, largely because of the vast number of fertilized eggs that simply fail to implant in the uterine wall.

I would argue, as would many researchers in the stem-cell field, that considering a fertilized egg human is not really accurate and would be a tragedy given the inefficiency of our own bodies to save all these eggs. What makes us human is something more profound: our ability to experience, to feel, to think and to overcome suffering.

SCNT research is promising because patients with spinal cord injuries, Parkinson's, diabetes or many other ailments potentially could receive treatment in the form of their own DNA, genetic material that is rightfully their own to use without fear of complications from their bodies' rejecting foreign tissue.

Although SCNT technically is cloning, it cannot legally produce clones in any practical sense of the word in the state of Missouri. Our paranoia of a sinister clone invasion should have ended after Amendment 2. We have no carbon copies, no velociraptors, just cells that could save lives.

The Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures, the original sponsor of Amendment 2, is considering an appeal to the court's decision. Meanwhile, Cures Without Cloning and the Missouri Baptist Convention are expected to try to collect signatures for their amended amendment by using tired rhetoric about exploitation of women for egg donations (paying for egg donations was made illegal in Amendment 2, and the procedure is far less life threatening than childbirth), stem-cell research producing no remarkable results in humans (true, but it is only a matter of time, like most medical breakthroughs, until amazing results in animals are duplicated in people) and the murdering of babies. These are distortions from a marginal worldview trying to impose belief on Missourians who should have the right to choose their own stance on this promising science.

Forget Hollywood clone paranoia. A signature against clones is a strike against autonomy and advancements in health.