Pro-Life lawyer: Cloning support brews problems

by Jennifer Brinker, Review Staff Writer

June 30, 2006

A recently published statewide poll shows that more than 60 percent of respondents favor a Missouri initiative that would constitutionally protect human cloning.

But the wording of the poll's question, according to one member of the pro-life community, only shows that the subject of human cloning and embryonic stem-cell research continues to serve as a source of confusion for many people.

What's even more problematic is that the Missouri Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, which is expected to appear on the Nov. 7 ballot, also has the ability to open a Pandora's box of legal and moral problems if passed, said Jim Cole, volunteer general counsel for Missouri Right to Life, the state's largest pro-life organization.

Published earlier this week in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the poll was conducted by Research 2000 of Rockville, Md., who interviewed 800 Missourians who regularly vote in state elections.

The question included the following text: "Supporters say such research may be the only way to provide cures for diseases like diabetes, Parkinson's and cancer, and is not human cloning. Opponents say that embryonic stem cells have not yet provided cures, and that SCNT (somatic cell nuclear transfer) creates a cloned human embryo."

The question "leads off stressing cures that would naturally predispose people to be in favor of obtaining those cures," said Cole.

The question also ignores "the good results that have already been received from adult stem-cell research," said Cole. He noted the wording implies that there are no successes with adult stem-cell research, which the Catholic Church has taught is a morally acceptable form of scientific research and therapies.

Adult stem-cell research, incidentally, has treated at least 70 diseases, including leukemia, lymphoma, forms of heart damage, spinal cord and stroke damage, sickle-cell anemia and tissue and bone regeneration, according to Do No Harm, a Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics.

Cole, a Harvard Law School graduate and bankruptcy trustee by occupation, has spent the last several months writing a series of papers on what he calls the "deceptive language" of the Missouri Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative.

"There are a lot of aspects about this initiative that people haven't been told about," said Cole.

During his research of the full text of the initiative, Cole said he discovered several "problems (that) involve much more than cloning. The thing that shocked me the most is the immunity that these people have built in for themselves."

If passed, he said, the initiative would, for example, provide proponents exemption from state health and safety regulations, immunity from lawsuits by injury victims and even cancel out provisions of certain current abortion laws. (Look to future editions of the Review for stories on these issues.)

For example, Cole said a state law prohibits performing an abortion to obtain tissue or organs for transplant.

The initiative, said Cole, would allow "fertilized human beings to be implanted. And if a woman is willing to (undergo an abortion), and so long as stem cells were somehow involved in the research and the procedures, this initiative completely legalizes those procedures."

"It could be done for instance when they implant several embryos into a woman as part of an IVF (in vitro fertilization) procedure and then they go and cull some of the others out by abortion to reduce the numbers," he said.

Cole said he said he began his research after observing the history of recently failed state legislation dealing with abortion.

For example, the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Mo., one of the several groups supporting the ballot initiative, last year opposed a bill that contained several provisions further regulating abortions performed in Missouri.

According to media reports and the Missouri Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the state's bishops, the Stowers Institute opposed a provision in the bill that stated the intent of the legislature is "to recognize and affirm the right to life of all humans, whether in utero or not." Officials from the Stowers Institute have said that the phrase could restrict or prohibit embryonic stem-cell research.

Cole said he also became concerned after reading a statement made by Robert P. George, a member of President George W. Bush's Council on Bioethics, who said cloning could someday turn into a market for fetal body parts. The statement came from an October 2005 article in the Weekly Standard, a national news magazine.

George said: "Based on the literature I have read and the evasive answers given by spokesmen for the biotechnology industry at meetings of the President's Council on Bioethics, I fear the long-term goal is indeed to create an industry in harvesting late embryonic and fetal body parts for use in regenerative medicine and organ transplantation."

"Most people are going to find that revolting, as they should," said Cole.

In his research of the initiative language, Cole said he constructed several possible situations to see how the law would apply to those instances. "Pretty soon, I came up with quite a list of things that the initiative would allow -- that nobody had talked about before."

Cole said he urges people to stop and take the time to closely read the text of the initiative, because once it's passed, it becomes "entrenched in the state constitution." An amendment could be reversed, but it would require a statewide vote to change it, he added.

"The legislature is frozen out so that it can't do anything about the harm that this initiative can bring," he said.

This is the first of an occasional series on a local pro-life attorney's analysis of the Missouri Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative.

Copyright © 2006 St. Louis Review.

This article posted August 17, 2006.