Andrew Meisner Lying Through his Teeth on WJR

I just overheard a radio interview regarding embryonic stem cell research and human cloning on WJR (hopefully they post a recording of the interview later) with Dr. Rich Poupard. Dr. Poupard was discussing his article in the Midland Daily News on how Governor Jennifer Granholm is using the official web site of Michigan to lobby on behalf of legislation which would legalize human cloning for research and killing human embryos for research.

About halfway through the program, Representative Andrew Meisner called in to challenge Dr. Poupard's claims regarding Meisner's legislation. Meisner attempted to act like his legislation wouldn't legalize human cloning and that somatic cell nuclear transfer isn't cloning.

Now, one may possibly assume that Rep. Meisner is ignorant about this issue or has been misled except Andrew Meisner's past press releases show that he knows perfectly well that somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is cloning.

For example, on a press release for May 23, 2005, says: "Michigan has statutory limits on stem cell research, as well as SCNT, (also known as therapeutic cloning) that is far more restrictive than current federal policy." (my emphasis)

On a press release for January 26, 2006, Meisner is quoted as saying, "The high degree of support for stem cell research proves that voters can make a distinction between reproductive and therapeutic cloning."

It would be nice if advocates of human cloning for research purposes, like Meisner and Granholm, could at least be honest about what they want and publicly make their case for it. Unfortunately, when the public wasn't comfortable even with the term "therapeutic cloning," advocates of human cloning for research have departed from using that term and have attempted to deceive the public about their goals.

It's very disappointing when politicians have so little faith in what laws they want to pass that they can't present what they want in a truthful manner. In January, Meisner thought voters would be able to make a distinction between cloning to bring a human child to birth and human cloning for research purposes. It seems that either he no longer believes this or he's discovered that the Michigan public isn't comfortable with human cloning regardless of its purpose.

Related: Strengthen cloning ban by legalizing cloning