Birdblog

A conservative news and views blog.

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Location: St. Louis, Missouri, United States

Monday, October 23, 2006

Truth or Terrible Consequences

(Hat tip: Steve from Free Citizen)

The Family Research Council has issueda warning to Missouri voters that the Stem-Cell Initiative (a proposed change to the Missouri constitution enshrining the right to clone human beings for stem-cell research) is not what it appears:

Dr. David Prentiss is the FRC's senior fellow for life sciences and a former adjunct professor of medical and molecular genetics at the Indiana University School of Medicine. He is cautioning Missouri voters not to be deceived by Amendment 2 and believes many, including even some pro-lifers, may be unaware of what is included in the 2,100-word ballot initiative.

This supposed stem-cell research amendment, if passed, "would enshrine in the Missouri Constitution the right for scientists to do human cloning," Prentiss says. That is, he explains, it would allow researchers "to create human embryos by the cloning process, which is somatic cell nuclear transfer -- and then require them to destroy those human embryos by the time they're about 14 days old."


He`s absolutely right, and the fact that proponents of the amendment have to lie about the matter should be cause for great concern. Why do they have to lie? Because what they are proposing is monstrous, and were the public to truly understand what this amendment means this thing would sink like a lead balloon. The only way for this to pass-and bring the mountains of government money to the biotech firms owned by the principle financiers (the Stowers Foundation and the holy reverend John Danforth, heir to the Ralston-Purina fortune which is poised to make out quite well from government largesse pumped into ESC research) is for the public to be kept in the dark about what it actually does-which is enshrines human cloning into the state constituion, making any kind of regulation by the state legislature impossible. It really is a scam.

Here is the text of the amendment in it`s entirety; here is the abridged version available (in pdf just to aggravate) on the Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures website. You will notice that the MCLC version omits the preamble, which shows what parts of the Missouri constitution this enormous amendment will overrule.

The MCLC site is very instructive; they tout the many blessings of stem-cell magic, but fail to inform the readers that these all resulted from adult or chordate stem-cells, not from embryonic cells. Embryonic stem-cells tend to turn cancerous. (That`s why private firms won`t fund ESC research.)

If this were such a good thing, the proponents would have no reason to obfuscate. The fact that they feel compelled to lie about the matter makes this dubious proposal even more doubtful.

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