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Cash-Strapped California Votes to Give $6 Billion for Cloning and Embryo Research

Biologist says Californians swallowed "magical thinking' that is 'antithetical to science"

November 3, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 71, a bill to give $3 billion of taxpayer funds to the biotech industry for research involving embryonic stem cells and another $3 billion to finance a bond issue. Passage of the bill was seen as a defeat for pro-life forces who valiantly tried to warn the public that they were being misled.

The law will allow the destructive use of human embryos already existing in frozen storage and the creation of cloned human beings for experimental research. The bill was supported by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger who has rejected Republican Party policy on the issue.

The language of the proposal describing the activities to be funded is similar to that used in much cloning and stem cell research legislation around the world. This language has been shown to be scientifically faulty and deceptive. In efforts to pass the California measure it was claimed by lobbyists that 'somatic cell nuclear transfer' is not 'cloning,' if the intended use of the embryo is pure research and not reproduction.

Dr. Stuart Newman, a cell biologist, filed an affidavit saying that cloning is cloning no matter what you intend to use it for. He said the claim that cloning is not cloning if the intention is only to use the embryo for research constitutes "magical thinking' that is 'antithetical to science."

Dr. Newman stated, "Until Stanford University decided in the last year to stop using the terms 'embryo cloning' and 'cloned embryos' to describe the technique of producing embryos by nuclear transfer…these were the terms used virtually exclusively for these items. The assertion that the viable product of nuclear transfer is not an embryo is equivalent to the assertion that organisms that develop from these products, such as Dolly the sheep, are not animals."

In commenting on the impending vote, Dr. Dianne Irving, an outspoken critic of the misrepresentation of science in legislation, said that the people of California had 'really been snookered.' "Congratulations to Dr. Newman", she said - "it's about time a real professionally respectable scientist came forward and formally refuted the 'snake-oil science' of these rogue researchers".

Judie Brown, president of American Life League said in a media release today, "The moral bankruptcy exhibited by those who voted for this measure, which endorses the destruction of innocent human beings, could be followed by a matching fiscal bankruptcy."

Previous LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Governor Schwarzenegger Supports Massive Grant…: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/oct/04102006.html

California Stem Cell Proponents Resorting to "Arcane" Distortions to Gain Tax Funding
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/may/04051013.html

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