There has been a several year campaign by “Big Biotech,” cloning propagandists, and some disease advocacy groups, particularly the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), to redefine cloning and somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). Instead of using the accurate scientific definition of SCNT, these propagandists masking as scientists are promoting a political definition that is pure junk biology. Here is a classic example from a story reporting on Mississippi’s pending ban on all human cloning:
“Information distributed by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International says there is ‘widespread confusion’ about somatic cell nuclear transfer, or SCNT, also called ‘therapeutic cloning.’ The foundation says the procedure involves removing the nucleus of an unfertilized egg and replacing it with the nucleus of an adult cell.
The foundation said the procedure is ‘a fundamentally different procedure from reproductive cloning, as was used by scientists in 1996 to create Dolly the sheep.’”
What pure, unadulterated garbage. There is no difference in the cloning technique used in “therapeutic cloning” and “reproductive cloning.” It is SCNT, the exact procedure used to make Dolly. There are not different kinds of cloning. Cloning is cloning is cloning. There are different uses of the cloned embryo created. But the cloning procedure itself is exactly the same.
On one hand, I don’t blame the AP reporter for this. She is just reporting the bilge put out by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. On the other hand I do: The time is long since past for the media to show some skepticism toward the claims by the pro cloning political machine and do a little independent research and ask some basic questions. One good question for the JDRF would be: How does the SCNT procedure in therapeutic cloning differ from the SCNT procedure in reproductive cloning. The answer, of course, would be that there are no differences. Then, once the lie was exposed, perhaps the media could look more deeply into some of the other inaccurate advocacy claims put out by these corroders of objective science.
The JDRF is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of legislators and the people in order to prevent an honest debate based on accurate scientific definitions. They are contemptuous of democracy.
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