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Oakland-based lawyer and bioethics author Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and a special consultant for the Center for Bioethics and Culture. His latest book entitled Consumers Guide to a Brave New World, published by Encounter Books, is due out in October.

How would you describe Proposition 71, the California bond initiative?

It would pay for human cloning research and embryonic stem cell research with billions in borrowed money. In California if you have a big enough budget, you can basically buy a law. That's what's being attempted here. Proponents are asking Californians to borrow $6 billion (including interest) in a state that's already in financial ruin—where our senior citizens are having services cut, roads are not being repaired, schools are closing, children's health care needs of today are not being met—and we're supposed to go deeper into debt for this speculative biotechnological research.

Who is poised to benefit the most from this referendum?

Biotech corporations and research centers and universities that will be paid with borrowed money to conduct research into human cloning and embryonic stem cells. Moreover, Proposition 71 is a proposed constitutional amendment! If it passes, the biotech industry and affiliated researchers will have a constitutional right to receive borrowed money in the amount of $295 million per year for 10 years. This is one of the most audacious corporate welfare money grabs I have ever seen. Only another constitutional amendment could alter its terms.

What do you believe is at stake?

Much is at stake, actually. First, whether the State of California should borrow money to pay for biotechnological research at a time when essential services are being pared to the bone. Second, I think democratic principles are at risk here. I question whether the public will actually understand the terms of this complicated measure or that it seeks a constitutional right to conduct research into human cloning, or somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) as it is known scientifically. For example, the initiative doesn't tell voters that SCNT is the same procedure used to make Dolly the cloned sheep. Nor does it detail that the act of SCNT is the same whether done to make a baby or to conduct research on a cloned embryo. This law wouldn't fund reproductive cloning, which is currently against California law in any case. The measure says the cloned embryo initially would have to be destroyed in 12 days. The key word is "initially," because it implies that time can be lengthened later on. But much of the information that might be acquired from the state-funded research into SCNT is the same that would be needed to do reproductive cloning, and once that data got out, it could be used by others to bring cloned babies into the world.

It is a huge scam these folks are trying to play. They are saying it's not about cloning but only allows somatic cell nuclear transfer. But SCNT is the act of cloning. It creates a new human embryo through "asexual" means. After that there are no other acts of cloning, only a determination as to what to do with the new human life that has been created. The initiative obfuscates this point to the point of unintelligibility. This is just an attempt to fool the people of California so that they will not understand what they are being asked to authorize.

Here's another example: [Referendum supporters] don't call an embryo an embryo. They call it "a surplus product of in vitro fertilization." This whole thing is so disingenuous.

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August (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48