Talk about word games…
…and I’m with you. That’s how this culture is continually coerced into accepting the unacceptable. Whoever controls the language, controls thought. The language is in great need of rescue and restoration.
Colleen Carroll Campbell nails it in this commentary on how Missouri citizens (read ‘American citizens’ when this rolls out further) have bought into what was until recently, unthinkable: cloning humans. The hitch is, those unsuspecting citizens don’t know what they voted for, exactly.
The argument that has persuaded many voters to overcome ethical qualms about embryonic stem cell research — that embryos used in such research already exist and may be discarded anyway — does not apply to embryos created through cloning. Voters tend to bristle at the prospect of manufacturing embryonic human clones for the express purpose of dismembering and destroying them.
But the cloning of embryos appeals to researchers who no longer want to be limited to extracting stem cells from adult or umbilical cord tissue or from embryos created through in-vitro fertilization. Cloning promises a virtually unlimited supply of human embryos to be stripmined for their stem cells, as long as enough women can be induced to donate their eggs.
Chilling, isn’t it? That’s why backers of this nightmare used sleight of hand to fool the voters.
To protect research cloning without arousing voter ire, Amendment Two’s authors bucked the scientific establishment’s commonly accepted definition of human cloning as the creation of a cloned human embryo through Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer — the process used to create Dolly the Sheep. Instead, they defined cloning as the implantation of that cloned embryo into a uterus. So the amendment banned reproductive cloning while making the cloning and destruction of human embryos for research a constitutional right.
Emphasis was added there, because that’s the ultimate deceit of this thing. It all turned on playing with words.
Now, as Colleen points out, grassroots groups have organized their opposition to this runaway science that slipped into law in Missouri. They’ve been working on it since the November election ended and they realized what the biotech profiteers were up to.
Last week, an umbrella group called Cures without Cloning launched a bid to close the cloning loophole created by Amendment Two. Its initiative, aimed at the November 2008 ballot, would not repeal Amendment Two or outlaw all embryonic stem cell research. It simply would allow Missouri to join other states that have banned human cloning by defining it the way most medical and scientific journals and popular publications do: as the creation of a cloned human embryo.
Words mean things, and they have consquences. Good for the people of Missouri to clarify the language, and pursue the consequences.
