Missouri Cloning Ban

May 2, 2006

The Kansas City Star reports that Missouri Senator Jim Talent “opposes a Missouri ballot measure protecting stem-cell research.” Well, yes and no. Talent does oppose the Show-Me State ballot measure, but it is not a measure to protect stem-cell research. It’s a measure that ultimately would protect cloning, although it is based on such a bad definition of cloning that it is not immediately apparent. The ballot initiative contains the following definition:

Clone or attempt to clone a human being means to implant in a uterus or attempt to implant in a uterus anything other than the product of fertilization of an egg of a human female by a sperm of a human male for the purpose of initiating a pregnancy that could result in the creation of a human fetus, or the birth of a human being.

That’s not cloning. That’s something that could be done with an embryo that results from cloning. The President’s Council on Bioethics, in their 2002 report Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry, recognized the importance of the terminology used in discussions of human cloning, and set for the following definition:

Human Cloning: The asexual production of a new human organism that is, at all stages of development, genetically virtually identical to a currently existing or previously existing human being.

This is the definition the Missouri initiative should have contained. Instead, this is the precise activity the Missouri initiative seeks to protect. As Senator Talent said, “I personally cannot support the initiative because I’ve always been opposed to human cloning and this measure would make cloning human life at the earliest stage a constitutional right.”