More Cloning Gibberish in the Media

The Associated Press continues the junk reporting that is endemic in the mainstream media about human cloning. This time, in referring to a legal dispute in Missouri about the title of a planned initiative that would legalize human cloning for biomedical research, but which contends in its title that it actually bans human cloning, the AP reported:

“At issue is a research procedure known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, in which the nucleus of an unfertilized human egg is replaced with the nucleus from a skin or nerve cell, then is stimulated to grow in a lab dish. The microscopic cluster of cells [more accurately, an embryo] is not implanted into a woman’s uterus, but opponents say it still amounts to human cloning.”

The highlighted sentence comes to you direct from pro-cloning spin central. It strongly implies that the act of cloning is implantation. But that is nonsensical. Cloning is a word, that in this context, refers to the creation of a new human organism through asexual means, e.g., somatic cell nuclear transfer. Implantation merely permits an existing embryo to be sustained further into development. Thus, that act cannot in any way be construed to be cloning.

But the political campaign to legalize human cloning in Missouri has redefined the term to win a political campaign and the compliant media merely parrots the pro-cloning party line. This is the same media, by the way, which wails and moans so loudly about the supposed destruction of science in America. Yet, in this story, it could care less about scientific accuracy in reporting.

(Full disclosure: I have informally and without charge consulted with Missourians Against Human Cloning and their attorneys in the litigation mentioned above.)