News came over the weekend of a state district court being
overruled by a higher court. Ho hum, no
news there, one would think, a routine occurrence…except this concerned stem
cell research, and that is always newsworthy.
The
state was Missouri, and what was at issue was whether the description by the
secretary of state of a ballot initiative (a description that would appear on
the ballot, and hence, might influence a voter) was misleading. The lower court said yes, and re-wrote the
description in what it believed was neutral language. But the appellate court – by a 2 to 1 vote - overruled
that court, ordering the secretary of state to change merely one word – from stating
that the ballot initiative would “repeal the current ban on human cloning”
to “change the current ban on human
cloning.” The losers will likely appeal,
and round the judicial merry-go-round we go, endlessly it seems. It would be amusing but for the fact that the
court’s decision means the initiative will not be on the ballot in the fall and
Missouri voters will be deprived of their right to decide the matter.
To understand the current dispute, it is necessary to recall
previous developments in this controversy.
In 2006, there was a well-funded effort to pass a bill,
titled, the “Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative” (the “Initiative”). The
Stowers family, who established the Stowers (research) Institute in Missouri,
where much good, ethical, scientific research takes place, poured over
$15,000,000 into supporting the Initiative.
That was sad because it was a misleading bill.
For instance, the Initiative defined “cloning” as occurring
when there is implantation in a woman’s womb.
But that is wrong. Cloning, or
somatic cell nuclear transfer (the two terms are synonyms), is a technique with
one aim: the creation of a living genetic duplicate of the same species. Thus, human cloning produces a human being,
while sheep cloning produces Dolly. It
does not matter where the living clone is located. Whether in Scotland or Missouri, whether in a
laboratory or in a womb, artificial or animal or human, “cloning” has occurred
whenever a living genetic duplicate comes into existence, not when it is implanted in a womb.
A womb is like a safe-house. You
may need to hide there to live, but you were a human being before you went
inside.
Likewise, the Initiative was misleading about “stem cell
research.” Adult stem cell research (“ASCR”),
at the time of the Initiative, had delivered over seventy successful human
treatments, involving thousands of individual patients, while embryonic stem
cell research (“ESCR”) had not delivered one (and has not done so to this day). There were (and are today) hundreds of
FDA-approved trials in process with ASCR, but, again, none with ESCR. In other words, ESCR made the promise, but
it’s ASCR that has redeemed the pledge. Nevertheless,
the Initiative swept all this under the carpet.
By making it legally impossible to “discourage” ESCR in Missouri, it
ensured that Missourian’s tax dollars would go to ESCR and away from proven ASCR
treatments and research. If the Missouri
legislature found ESCR was not promising and that the best way to help sick
people was to fund ASCR, the state constitution would, after the passage of the
Initiative, forbid them from doing anything about it.
And
that is what happened – the Initiative passed, but just barely. In a very close vote, where the pro-Initiative
forces once lead by over thirty points, the ballot initiative passed by a vote
of 1,077,276 to 1,028,495.
Since
then, anti-Initiative forces in Missouri have been trying to pass their own
referendum in order to enact a ban on all
human cloning, whether the clone is implanted in a womb or not. However, Missouri Secretary of State, Robin
Carnahan, decided to describe\ on the ballot their language as follows: “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…”
Missourians
seeking to overturn the Initiative found this language characterizing their own
initiative to be seriously misleading (for instance, since there are no
therapies and cures from ESCR, how could banning cloning “limit Missouri
patients’ access to…therapies and cures”?).
They took the matter to court. On
February 20th, Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce ruled that
the existing ballot language was “insufficient and unfair.” She re-wrote the description to say that the
ban includes “prohibiting human cloning that is conducted by creating a human
embryo at any stage from the one-cell stage forward; prohibiting expenditure of
taxpayer dollars on research or experimentation on human cloning.”
It
is, frankly, hard to see how she can be wrong, despite what the appellate court
said. The description she supplied makes
clear the point at issue – what a clone is, i.e., a genetic duplicate from the
first cell stage onward. The original
Initiative had obscured that fact by focusing on implantation. Many voters were misled – in a very close
vote – into thinking they were banning cloning, on creating clones, while all the Initiative did was to ban its implantation. By requiring the change of only one word,
from “repeal” to “change,” while continuing to allow the underlying law to be
described as “the current ban on human cloning,” the appellate court permitted
the deception of Missouri citizens to continue.
What
will eventually happen in Missouri no one can know. However, I do know that
until we are honest about the science, we will never reach a just – or even
honest – resolution of the issues.