Watch the below video, and read the text (all the way through, even the fine print) of Amendment 2 and see for yourself. This is the amendment that Senator Talent opposes on grounds that it makes human cloning legal in Missouri. It’s the same amendment that demagogue Claire McCaskill uses to accuse Senator Talent of essentially being against cures for diseases.
If what the lady in the video is saying is true, pro-embryonic stem cell advocates are involved in committing a major fraud against Missourians. I’m not familiar with some of the terms used in the text of the amendment, so I’m hoping people more familiar with them can help out.
BTW, Robert Novak believes Amendment 2 is a fraud - here’s what he wrote about it.
Hat tip: The Chatterbox Chronicles
Update: WOW. This site provides a wealth of information on this issue. Like this, for example:
The lawyers who wrote Amendment 2 work for giant biotechnology labs that plan to make billions of dollars by cloning humans for research. They wanted to guarantee that Missouri lawmakers could never outlaw it. But they knew that most Missourians oppose the idea of creating and destroying human life in a laboratory.
How did Amendment 2’s slick promoters get around this? Simple. Instead of being honest about their objective, they came up with a phony definition of “cloning” and pretended to ban it.
The operation used to clone human beings for research is called “Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer.” This involves combining a woman’s egg with the nucleus of another living cell. The result is a human embryo. Two weeks later, stem cells are “harvested” from that embryo, and it’s destroyed.
Backers of Amendment 2 claim that this isn’t “cloning.” But practically every scientific authority disagrees with them, including the National Academies of Science and the American Medical Association. And a Missouri Appeals Court Judge wrote in March 2006 that “Nuclear transfer is cloning.”
Amendment 2 doesn’t actually “ban human cloning.” It protects it.
NRO:
The initiative doesn’t ban cloning. It bans only the implantation of a cloned embryo into a woman’s womb to initiate a pregnancy. In other words, it outlaws the development of a cloned embryo into a cloned baby: You can create a cloned human embryo as long as you kill it during research. (If artificial wombs can be made to work, however, the law would allow even for cloned babies.)
Saturday update: See my follow-up post on this issue here.
| Email This Post | Print This |
Thanks so much for posting this and helping to spread the word. I just wrote an essay for my local paper on why I oppose this amendment. It endorses cloning and experimenting on human life. And Missourians have been lied to about it.
Comment by Little Miss Chatterbox @ 10/28/2006 - 1:12 am
Hi Little MC! Thanks for stopping by.
I have done so much research on this issue tonight that my head hurts. I am outright STUNNED at what the pro-Amendment 2 folks are trying to do there - they are lying through their teeth and getting away with it. This is one of the biggest political scams foisted upon the public I’ve come across in recent history, and it could have open the door for it happening in other states.
Please send me your essay via email - or the link to it in the paper. I’d love to read it.
Comment by Sister Toldjah @ 10/28/2006 - 1:35 am
Is there no depth of ethical depravity that these people will not sink to??? HEY Michael J. Fox, Now that we know the real purpose of Amendment 2 do you still think it is all about “cures”??? It’s all about the money Honey. If what she is saying is true and these biotech companies have their way Missouri would be financially devastated in a matter of years. This is a sad, sad state of affairs, these people who declare that they care for human life sooooo much really just care about the science. And what if they do start to make clones??? You will then have a permenant sub-human class that will have to be dealt with in every way envisioned. New laws will have to be passed, new ethical standards, new programs for “disposal” of these new sub-humans. What a damn mess.
I was talking to a friend last night and I told him my problem isn’t with science. It is with scientists that if a line is drawn, keep saying “Yeah, but what if we just cross it only this much”. Next thing you know you have to re-draw the line. It has become exasperating. I think we should pass a new law, that no more research money can be wasted on Embryonic Stem Cell Research until we cure aids or something else. Risk / Reward, that is how it works in the real world. Too many of these guys are just wrapped up in pushing the envelope. They have no care for the mayhem this might cause. - Lorica
Comment by Lorica @ 10/28/2006 - 9:59 am
@ Lorica: And what if they do start to make clones??? You will then have a permenant sub-human class that will have to be dealt with in every way envisioned. New laws will have to be passed, new ethical standards, new programs for “disposal” of these new sub-humans. What a damn mess.
You’ve hit it on the head right here. And let’s take it one step further. What about hypothetical laws concerning these “sub-humans”??? There was nothing to indicate that Dolly the Sheep was any different from any other sheep. So if we create humans who are no different from any other humans except that they were cloned, who’s to say that the clones are NOT human? They would, essentially, be no different from a natural identical twin.
Is a TWIN sub-human? Which of the twins is the human and which the sub-human?
The can of worms this opens is beyond trivializing as “they’re just clones”.
Comment by mamapajamas @ 10/29/2006 - 3:27 pm
Support for Amendment 2 has been steadily slipping as voters have been learning the truth. This is a major fraud, it is all about money. The biotech industry, backed by the billionaires who started the Stowers Institute in Kansas City, have spent $30 million dollars on this campaign - more than Jim Talent and Claire McCaskill have spent COMBINED.
Biomedical tesearch is a multi-billion dollar BUSINESS - it has no right to constitutional protection.
I have a 24-year-old daughter with a spinal cord injury who has been doing everything she can to get people to vote no on this amendment. Please check out her beautiful blog - reflectionsofaparalytic.com.
Thanks!
Comment by Cindy @ 11/5/2006 - 2:31 pm