Clone the Truth #14

By rebecca on March 30, 2006 7:58 PM | No Comments

Once again from the Kansas City Star so I am surely not expecting a reply, but I had to write them a Clone the Truth letter anyway:

Dear Reader's Representative,

I am writing to inform you of errors in terminology in Kit Wagar's piece "Stem-cell ballot issue challenge is rejected" as seen on www.Kansascity.com dated March 29, 2006.

Wagar writes, "They argued that the summary was deceptive because the initiative would protect laboratory techniques for cloning cells..." Actually the laboratory technique in question is somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) which creates cloned embryos, not just cloned cells. A cloned embryo is a complete organism and a cell is defined as a subunit of an organism. It is from the week-old cloned embryo that the embryonic stem cells are extracted.

Wagar also writes, "Some voters might define a laboratory technique used to copy cells as human cloning." Once again, SCNT does not "copy cells" it creates cloned embryos.

Please see this tutorial on SCNT from Princeton's Dept. of Molecular Biology that clearly shows that SCNT creates an embryo, not just "cells":

http://www.molbio.princeton.edu/courses/mb427/2001/projects/09/transfertutorial.htm

It is critical that your readers understand this initiative so that they can make an informed decision at the ballot box. That requires the proper scientific terminology. I therefore ask that you print a correction.

Sincerely,
Rebecca Taylor