Show Me The Definitions

October 23, 2006

In just a matter of days, citizens in the “Show-Me” state of Missouri will be going to the polls like the rest of the nation to cast their votes for various candidates, but that is not all. Missourians also have the opportunity to decide about a matter that will last long after the current candidates have left office: a constitutional amendment to allow human cloning and embryonic stem cell research in their state. The language of Missouri’s propsed Constitutional Amendment 2 can be confusing, so it is timely for Missourians to understand the definitions: before the deed is done, the die cast.

Cloning is also known as “somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT)” in scientific language. Once the somatic cell nuclear transfer results in a zygote/blastocyst/embryo (whichever term may be used), cloning has taken place. “Therapeutic” refers to the use of the cloned embryo’s stem cells, while “reproductive” cloning refers to the further growth and development of that cloned embryo through the stages of fetus (after eight weeks gestation) and beyond. In both situations, humans are cloned; the different names given to the process are simply a reflection of intent: whether the embryos are destroyed in order to obtain their embryonic stem cells as “therapy” for others, or the cloned embryo is allowed to develop further to “reproduce” a second human with (almost exactly) the same genetic make-up as another person. The Missouri bill, however, defines cloning as the implantation in a uterus of a cloned embryo. By such disingenuous turn of a phrase, the bill is purported to “ban cloning.” That is simply not true.

Proponents of embryonic stem cell research in Missouri are not the first to use language to obfuscate the issue. In 2004, New Jersey’s then-Governor McGreevey signed into law a bill that was touted as one that “banned cloning.” The bill stated “A person who knowingly engages or assists, directly or indirectly, in the cloning of a human being is guilty of a crime of the first degree.” So it gave the appearance of banning cloning without doing so. The reason it didn’t is because of the definition of cloning used in that particular bill: cloning is defined as “the replication of a human individual by cultivating a cell with genetic material through the egg, embryo, fetal and newborn stages into a new human individual” (PDF). In New Jersey, it is not illegal to implant a cloned embryo in a woman’s uterus, and allow full gestation. A newborn cloned infant, however, constitutes a felony on the part of the cloner. Are these the sort of semantic games the Missourians wish to play?

It would seem that a constitutional amendment would provoke much thought and serious consideration as well as honest debate. Understanding the definitions is the first step in that process. Obfuscating the issues with language that confuses the electorate is an ignoble beginning.