Big Biotech’s Pro Cloning Strategy

Big Biotech is mounting a clever—it should be, considering the tens of millions being spent on its propaganda campaign—strategy to keep research cloning legal. Here’s how the gambit would work: Pour millions of campaign and advocacy dollars into conservative states to induce voters to pass laws or constitutional amendments protecting any research allowed by federal law. Promote these laws by, 1)Hyping the potential for CURES! CURES! CURES!, 2) Obfuscating the biology of the issue, such as redefining the term cloning so that an explicit legalization of cloning can pose as a ban, and 3) Sponsoring spurious studies that promise hundreds of billions in economic benefit to the state if the amendment will only be passed. And work the ever-compliant media to set aside any skepticism in pursuit of the cause of science. (Well, that isn’t work, actually, it is a given.)

Then, at the federal level, simply impede any effort to create reasonable regulatory prohibitions against human cloning.

The model is Amendment 2 in Missouri. But I am now hearing from people in Nebraska who have noticed the early rumblings of a similar campaign likely to be mounted there. And polling was just published in Georgia that seems geared clearly toward these same ends.

This makes Missouri the key. If Amendment 2 is defeated, Big Biotech and its propagandists will have to go back to the drawing board. If it passes, watch for the game plan to repeated throughout Red State America.