A Reading Comprehension Test: Missouri's Amendment Two

[BTirish]

In the controversy over Limbaugh's comments on Michael J. Fox and the reaction to the strange ad by Jim Caviezel & co. (which wasn't really a response to MJF, because his ad was in support of Claire McCaskill, not of Amendment 2), something that has been lost is the question of exactly what Missouri's proposed amendment 2 will do. In the ads currently airing in Missouri, either one side or the other is lying.

http://www.sos.mo.gov/elections/2006...ppStemCell.asp

Check it out, if you like, and let's see how the following poll turns out.

[PLOlover]

Semi thread hijack, but I don't get the angle on the stem cell fetus issue. The science I've read says they can do the exact same thing with adult breast tissue stem cells or something like that.

So stem cell research could be done without any fetal tissue at all.

So, given the above to be true (to weed out those of you who will doubt the above premise), what's the deal? Where does the politization of fetal stem cells come from? Does it suit the purposes of both the prolife and prochoice hardliners? Does big pharma have a money interest in fetal tissue as opposed to breast tissue?

[ShakeZula06]

What the hell is a blastocyst?

[AlexM]

The lack of reading comprehension (did the "nos" just not read it?) is quite sad.

[ShakeZula06]

I flipped a coin

[BTirish]

One day after posting, and not too many votes have been cast. That's not surprising, I suppose. First, it's a local issue--but, if this passes in Missouri, you can expect similar attempts in other states in the future. Second, it's much more exciting to go on and on about scandals and theories, to rant and ramble, than to take a few minutes to actually read a legislative text like the one that the Caviezel & co. ad (which itself got a fair amount of attention) was talking about.

In the poll, the majority of the votes that have been cast have given "yes" as the answer to both questions. Anyone who answered "yes" to either of the two questions in the poll FAILED this reading comprehension test. But, you are in the majority, and the amendment is crafted with the intention of deceiving you.

Did those of you who voted "yes" read paragraph 6? It contains definitions of 17 terms appearing in the amendment. Just reading paragraph 2 of the amendment, the answer to both questions seems to be "yes." But the definitions distort the plain meaning of the words found in paragraph 2.

We'll start with the second question, because the right answer is a little more obvious. In paragraph 2 we find the following. I assume that those of you who answered "yes" to this question read this section of paragraph 2:

[ QUOTE ]
(4) No person may, for valuable consideration, purchase or sell human blastocysts or eggs for stem cell research or stem cell therapies and cures.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, it would seem to follow from this that paying money for human eggs or human blastocysts is going to be outlawed. Not so. Paragraph 6 contains the following definition of "valuable consideration":

[ QUOTE ]
(17) “Valuable consideration” means financial gain or advantage, but does not include reimbursement for reasonable costs incurred in connection with the removal, processing, disposal, preservation, quality control, storage, transfer, or donation of human eggs, sperm, or blastocysts, including lost wages of the donor. Valuable consideration also does not include the consideration paid to a donor of human eggs or sperm by a fertilization clinic or sperm bank, as well as any other consideration expressly allowed by federal law.

[/ QUOTE ]

So, this amendment defines valuable consideration as anything except a long list of things for which parties exchanging eggs and blastocysts can be reimbursed. It also excludes the consideration paid to an egg donor, and this consideration is itself part of the costs incurred by a fertility clinic for which they can be reimbursed when transferring eggs to researchers. So the answer to the simply phrased question, "Would Amendment 2 ban paying money for human eggs and human blastocysts?" is clearly "no." It allows for fertility clinics to pay women for their eggs, and it allows researchers to pay fertility clinics for those eggs. As for blastocysts, it will be acceptable for money to change hands in the transfer of blastocysts from fertility clinics to researchers, but I'm not sure exactly how that will play out because I'm not very familiar with the legal status of frozen blastocysts kept by fertility clinics.

Ok, now for the big one: does the amendment ban human cloning? It would seem so:

[ QUOTE ]
(1) No person may clone or attempt to clone a human being.

[/ QUOTE ]

But then, in paragraph 6, we find the following definition:

[ QUOTE ]
(2) “Clone or attempt to clone a human being” means to implant in a uterus or attempt to implant in a uterus anything other than the product of fertilization of an egg of a human female by a sperm of a human male for the purpose of initiating a pregnancy that could result in the creation of a human fetus, or the birth of a human being.

[/ QUOTE ]

This simply is not the definition of cloning. This is the isolation of one step in the entire process that is sometimes called reproductive cloning and the application of the name "cloning" to that one step. But under this amendment, all research involving the use of somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is included in the definition of "embryonic stem cell research":

[ QUOTE ]
(5) “Human embryonic stem cell research,” also referred to as “early stem cell research,” means any scientific or medical research involving human stem cells derived from in vitro fertilization blastocysts or from somatic cell nuclear transfer. For purposes of this section, human embryonic stem cell research does not include stem cell clinical trials.

[/ QUOTE ]

The amendment does not ban the process of SCNT and it could in fact be construed as enshrining as a constitutional right SCNT research as a part of stem cell research. <u>SCNT is cloning.</u> The definition of cloning offered in this amendment is ridiculous. It suggests that "cloning" has occurred only once you take a blastocyst produced by SCNT and attempt to implant it into a uterus. But what makes this an attempt at "cloning"? Precisely the fact that what would eventually be born would be a human baby that is genetically the same as another human being from whom genetic material was taken and implanted into an egg cell which had had its own nucleus removed. What would make that human baby a clone--being a member of the human species with genetic material identical to another human being because of SCNT--is already true of the blastocyst derived from SCNT. This blastocyst is itself already a clone.

What the amendment says is that you can clone human beings all that you want for the purposes of research (what is sometimes referred to as research cloning) so long as you don't attempt to let one develop into a baby (what is sometimes called reproductive cloning).

Those of you who failed the test can take consolation in the fact that this is exactly what those who crafted this amendment want. They want to mislead people, because this amendment would never pass in Missouri if it spoke in plain, clear language.