AMENDED DRAFT for the Chronicle
Nigel M. de S. Cameron and Jennifer Lahl

California’s Bizarre Cloning Proposition

In all the annals of popular democracy, one of the strangest initiatives ever to make it to the ballot is the $6 billion bond. It is intended to sustain biotech researchers from the public purse while they pursue a project that private investors have already decided is worthless. And it is a project that nation after nation around the world has already declared to be a felony.

First: We need to be told the truth about the initiative. It purports to be focused on the need for “stem cell research” to be legal and funded in California. But: stem cell research is already legal and funded in California. That is true of adult stem cell research, which raises no ethical problems and has already led to cures for what had been incurable diseases. It is true of embryo stem cell research, which raises ethical problems for many people (pro-choice as well as pro-life) since it involves destroying human embryos. It is even true of cloning, the mass manufacture of human embryos for experiments. None of this is illegal in California. All of it can be funded by the state, if that’s what the state wants to do. In the case of adult stem cells, and some embryo stem cell research, it is currently being funded by the federal government. Of course, all this research can also be funded from private resources. If the sponsors of this initiative could promise just 10% of their claims, private money would be swamping the market.

Second: We need to grasp the fact that this is all about cloning. It’s California’s cloning proposition. Don’t be taken in by talk of the need for extra cell lines for research, or the fate of unwanted frozen embryos. The so-called “therapeutic cloning” idea is what has taken the media by storm, gripped the popular imagination, activated celebrities including widow of the state’s most famous son, and offered that fragile and most precious quality to the sick and those who love them – hope.

The idea is disarmingly simple. The technique that cloned Dolly the sheep in 1996 can be used to clone sick people. The cloned embryo, in effect your twin, can be a source of stem cells that will regenerate your tissue, and cure whatever your degenerative disease may be. In fact, animal cloning experiments have been remarkably unsuccessful, since the embryo stem cells have a nasty habit of causing tumors. In the March New England Journal of Medicine, Drs. Phimister and Drazen state that there are “still many hurdles to clear before embryonic stem cells can be used therapeutically” because “undifferentiated embryonic stem cells can form tumors after transplantation”.

Third: We need to be clear about what’s happening outside California. Supporters of cloning for stem cells love to perpetuate the myth that their only opponents are crazy pro-life activists. That’s plainly a lie; there is no other word for it. If it were true, why has all human cloning – including exactly the kind of research that the proposition would have us fund – been prohibited in Canada, under federal law? Why did Australia do the same thing? Why in Germany, where they know a thing or two about unethical research, will it get you five years in jail? Why is France on the verge of a similar law? None of these countries is in the grip of pro-life conservatives. Why is momentum building for a global convention to ban cloning at the United Nations (it had 66 co-sponsors last time around)? Nation by nation, the civilized world is turning its back on the mass production of human embryos for destructive experimentation.

Fourth: We need to grasp the proposition’s bizarre economics. It’s being said that this vast investment will actually save healthcare costs, as well as cure diseases, even though it has to be imposed by hype and ballot on the wishes of California’s elected representatives.

This claim does not hold up to logical scrutiny. Anyone making it in an IPO prospectus would do jail time. But the proposition is a prospectus to the people of California, and the combination of hype and hubris needs to be nailed. The one thing certain about the proposition is that it will pump billions of public dollars into the pockets of researchers and businesses. Even were “therapeutic cloning” to work, it would be extraordinary expensive. But this is not a mere matter of opinion. California’s business community has already made up its mind. If it believed the hyped hope of those behind the proposition, it would be pouring funds into the field in the expectation of reaping vast profits. Instead, it has already voted with its feet.

And that is exactly what the people of California need to do in November. They need to resist this effort to railroad them into closing schools and cutting food stamp programs while they feather-bed researchers into a uniquely privileged position in which they have a constitutional right to pursue research that business won’t fund and the legislature does not believe in either.

Nigel M. de S. Cameron is President of the Institute on Biotechnology and the Human Future; he has served as bioethics adviser on the US delegation to the United Nations discussion of a cloning convention, though he writes in his personal capacity. Jennifer Lahl is National Director of the Center for Bioethics and Culture, based in Oakland.