Missouri’s Constitutional Ban on Human Cloning

The Missouri Constitution makes it a criminal offense to “clone or attempt to clone a human being.”

Any attempt to initiate a pregnancy to develop a human clone will result in severe penalties, including imprisonment (up to 15 years) and fines (up to $250,000).

What is banned:

The process of trying to create a cloned human being, or a human version of Dolly the Sheep, is strictly banned in Missouri. Prior to the November 2006 passage of the Stem Cell Amendment, it was perfectly legal. It is now illegal to try to transfer to a woman’s uterus any cells, eggs, or anything else for the purpose of trying to develop a cloned human. The process of trying to initiate a pregnancy in an animal to create a clone is sometimes referred to as “reproductive cloning.”

Attempts to clone a human being should not be confused with legitimate types of replicating, or cloning, cells to cure disease.

The Missouri Constitution draws a distinction between attempts to “clone a human being,” which is banned, and a procedure for medical research or for treating disease that involves replicating (or “cloning”) of a patient’s own skin cell in a lab dish in order to create healthy new cells to help treat his or her disease. This process is referred to as somatic cell nuclear transfer, or SCNT. It is also sometimes referred to as “therapeutic cloning” because the cells are copied for the purpose of providing or developing a therapy for a patient’s disease or injury.

America’s most respected doctors and scientists draw the same distinction as does the Missouri Constitution, believing that “reproductive cloning" should be banned, but that “therapeutic cloning” should be encouraged because it holds great medical promise to lead to cures for debilitating diseases. In 2002, 40 Nobel Prize Winners sent a letter to members of the U.S. Senate making this important distinction. Nobel Prize Winning Scientist Paul Berg has stated that “cloning humans and 'therapeutic cloning' [or SCNT] are fundamentally different. The cloning of a human being should be prohibited. [SCNT], on the other hand, is meant to produce stem cells, not babies.”

Opponents of stem cell research have falsely claimed that human cloning is not banned in our Constitution, because in their efforts to ban stem cell research, they also want to forbid promising medical procedures that require the copying of cells. However, the terminology, the concepts, and the distinction used in the Missouri Constitution are the same as used by America’s most respected doctors and scientists.

More on the Scientific Meaning of “Cloning”:

Opponents of stem cell research purposely use the word “cloning” to scare the public and mislead people into thinking stem cell research is the same as cloning a human being. However, the facts do not support their distortions.

The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB), an 11,000-member scientific organization, states, “Since 1997 The American Society for Cell Biology has stated and stood by its strong opposition to the reproductive cloning of human beings [this is the same cloning of human beings that is now banned in the Missouri Constitution after passage of the Stem Cell Amendment]…no responsible scientist favors reproductive cloning… But there is substantial justification to believe that somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), or what many have referred to as therapeutic cloning, will energize scientific progress in the fight against the most debilitating illnesses known to man.” They continue, “…cloning is a scientific term that describes the preparation of an infinite number of copies of, for example a single molecule, cell, virus or bacterium…integral to modern forensic procedures, medical diagnostics, vaccine development, and the discovery and production of many of the most promising drugs.”

The ASCB closes by exposing the misleading tactics of stem cell opponents. “Conflating the term cloning as it is used for the creation of genetically identical humans with the valuable and appropriate uses of cloning embryonic stem cell lines for basic research and therapeutic purposes is inappropriate. The two issues need to be considered separately; otherwise we run the serious risk of sacrificing certain great benefits to prevent a perceived undesirable practice.”

Click here to read the full ASCB position paper on cloning.