A reader sent me an update on the Cures Without Cloning Campaign in Missouri.  This campaign is intended to add an amendment to the Missouri constitution to undo the cloning amendments from last years change to the constitution.  As many will remember the ballot from last year was quite disingenuous in it wording by making it appear to ban cloning while in fact supporting so-called therapeutic cloning.  This has been a common tactic of embryonic stem-cell supporters to lie for our own good.<>br
With more of the same tactics the Secretary of the State has certified
a ballot title that is truly a outrageously biased version of the
ballot initiative.

Shall the Missouri Constitution be
amended to repeal the current ban on human cloning or attempted cloning
and to limit
Missouri patients� access to stem cell research, therapies and cures
approved by voters in November 2006 by:
 
� redefining the ban on human cloning or attempted cloning to
criminalize and impose civil penalties for
some currently allowed research, therapies and cures; 
and 
 
� prohibiting hospitals or other institutions from using public funds
to conduct such research?
 
This proposal could have a significant negative fiscal impact 
on state and local governmental entities due to its prohibition of
certain research activities. However, the total costs to state and
local governmental entities are unknown. 

I am surprised that they didn’t add
that it would also poke the eyes
out of kittens.



The attempt to actually create a
cloning ban is stated as a repeal to
the current ban on cloning.  What current therapies and cures
are there from ESCR in the first place?  I guess zero is a
hard number to elucidate on.  I guess we shouldn’t be
surprised by the twisting and outright lies of the ESCR supporters, but
how far they will go is amazing.



Here is the ballot title as it was
submitted before it went through the doublethink processor.

It shall be unlawful to clone or
attempt to clone a human being as that term is defined in subsection 2
of this section. Researchers may conduct stem cell research to discover
cures for disease and develop stem cell therapies and cures, provided
that the research complies with the limitations of this section and the
limitations of Section 38(d). The prohibition of this section shall be
in addition to the prohibitions of Section 38(d).
 
2. For all purposes within this article, �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.
 
3. No taxpayer dollars shall be expended:
    1. to clone or attempt to clone a human being; or

    2. to research or experiment using a human
embryo, or any part of a human embryo, derived from cloning or
attempting to clone a human being.

They are currently mounting a legal
challenge or the rewording.

If you are from Missouri you can contact Missourians
Against Human Cloning to help out.

The Cardinal Newman Society is sponsoring the Sisters of Life to speak
at Seton Hall University – Sisters of Life Co-Worker Training at Seton
Hall to Show How to Serve a Pregnant Woman with the Heart of Christ.
  This is part of an ongoing program to bring the
Sisters of Life to speak at Catholic college campuses.

Nov. 7 (Bloomberg) — New Jersey
voters rejected a $450 million bond measure to fund stem-cell research,
a defeat for Democratic Governor Jon Corzine, who backed the proposal
with his own money and advocated on its behalf.

With 95 percent of precincts reporting, the question was defeated by 53
percent to 47 percent, according to nj.com, a Web site affiliated with
the Star-Ledger of Newark. The measure would have authorized the state
to borrow as much as $45 million annually for 10 years to fund
scientists’ work in the field.

The rejection shows voters didn’t buy Corzine’s arguments that
borrowing for investment in stem-cell research would attract economic
development and help retain business in New Jersey, home to more
pharmaceutical companies than any other in the U.S. state, said Ingrid
Reed, a political scientist at Rutgers University. The governor
personally donated $150,000 to a stem-cell advocacy group campaigning
for the measure.

“This was clearly a big defeat,” said Reed, director of Rutgers’
Eagleton Project New Jersey in New Brunswick. Voters “didn’t have
confidence that this would pay off in the short run,” she said.

This is certainly good news that even in
New Jersey the Pied Piper hymn of “cures, cures, cures” doesn’t always
work.  It would be nice to think that the total disingenuous
of ESCR supporters with their empty promises and texts of the bill that
once again tried to fool voters in concern to cloning is what did the
bill in. Most news outlets are reporting this as a case of
cost-conscious voters rejecting it for monetary reasons.
 Surely some did it on those grounds, but if the ESCR hype was
being bought this surely would not have hindered it.

Thinking Catholic Gary Wills has an embarrassing op ed in the L.A. Times that makes me blush for him. Ramesh Ponnuru has done the commentary for me.

He has a long, confused op-ed on abortion in the L. A. Times. His focus on evangelicals is a little odd if all you had to go on was this op-ed, you might think they were the only people who oppose abortion.

If we are to decide the matter of abortion by natural law, that means we must turn to reason and science, the realm of Enlightened religion. But that is just what evangelicals want to avoid. Who are the relevant experts here? They are philosophers, neurobiologists, embryologists. Evangelicals want to exclude them because most give answers they do not want to hear.

What is Wills talking about? Evangelical (and other) pro-lifers are perfectly willing to turn to embryologists, regardless of those embryologists’ position on abortion policy, for confirmation of the thesis that human embryos are living organisms of the human species. There are pro-life philosophers, too, and plenty of pro-lifers cite them.

If Wills had consulted one of them, he might have avoided some of the wrong turns he takes when he tries to commit philosophy. “Harvesting carrots, on a consistent pro-life hypothesis, would constitute something of a massacre.” Okay, that’s
just embarrassing, so let’s move on.

It is certainly true that the fetus is human life. But so is the semen before it fertilizes; so is the ovum before it is fertilized. They are both human products, and both are living things. But not even evangelicals say that the destruction of one or the other would be murder. . . .

The universal mandate to preserve “human life” makes no sense. My hair is human life it is not canine hair, and it is living. It grows. When it grows too long, I have it cut. Is that aborting human life? The same with my growing human fingernails. An evangelical might respond that my hair does not have the potential to become a person. True. But semen has the potential to become a person, and we do not preserve every bit of semen that is ejaculated but never fertilizes an egg.

Wills’s skin cells and sperm cells are human, and alive, but they’re part of an organism (him). They’re not living human organisms, as a human fetus is. As for the notion that semen has the potential to become a person: Wills needs a refresher course in biology. Perhaps he should ask an evangelical for a referral to an embryologist? Catholics were discussing natural law theory long before the so-called enlightenment that was more apt to chop off heads than to make decisions based on reason and science.

Wills would be on steadier ground he if mentioned evangelicals that had abandoned natural law theory in the first place, though it is certainly making a comeback in those circles.

If it was Lent I would recommend reading Wills’ whole column.