Credit Where Credit is Due: AP Gets Missouri Cloning Story Right

The Associated Press has, miracle of miracles, reported accurately about the planned anti-cloning amendment that Missouri’s own media generally botched From the AP report (in the St. Louis Post Dispatch!) byline David A. Lieb:

Without specifically repealing last year’s measure, the new proposal attempts to reverse a key portion by writing a new definition for banned human cloning activities.

As a result of the 2006 initiative, “the Missouri Constitution currently has confusing language, which allows the same method of cloning that was used to create Dolly the sheep,” said Dr. Lori Buffa of St. Peters, a pediatrician serving as chairwoman for the new group. “The Cures Without Cloning initiative is meant to just make it clear that human cloning within the state of Missouri would be prohibited.”

At issue is a procedure known scientifically as somatic cell nuclear transfer, in which a person’s cell is injected into a human egg, then stimulated to grow as if it had been fertilized by a sperm. Scientists remove the resulting stem cells for research, destroying the newly formed embryo.

Last year’s amendment made it a crime, punishable by up to 15 years in prison, to “clone or attempt to clone a human being.” But its definition of human cloning allowed somatic cell nuclear transfer, so long as no one attempted to implant the cloned embryo in a woman’s uterus.

Opponents contend that definition is deceptive. They claim a cloned human exists the moment scientists create that embryo. The newly proposed constitutional amendment would create another cloning definition that would encompass—and ban—somatic cell nuclear transfer.