Stem-cell petition

The Kansas City Star

A petition drive to protect a form of lifesaving stem-cell research in Missouri is proceeding with the approval of the state's top leaders. ... Yet a group in Scottsdale, Ariz., has gone to court to keep the initiative off the November 2006 ballot. The Alliance Defense Fund, a religious-based group, contends the ballot language attempts to deceive voters.

The proposed constitutional amendment would ban human cloning but protect all stem-cell research permitted by federal law. Opponents claim a form of research involving early stem cells amounts to human cloning. They are the ones being deceptive. Their protests are about stem cells that are cultivated in a petri dish, don't involve the union of an egg and a sperm and are never implanted in a woman.

To call such a process human cloning is to paste an extremist definition onto a process that holds great medical hope. No court should be a party to such a maneuver.