Lamb makes stem-cell statement

By Roseann Moring

Published Sept. 11, 2007

The interim UM system president issued a statement on Friday condemning a proposed initiative tightening restrictions on stem cell research in Missouri.

Cures Without Cloning, a Missouri organization that aims to promote legislation prohibiting human cloning in Missouri, has proposed an initiative that would close a loophole in an anti-cloning amendment of the state constitution.

A news release on their Web site states that a specific kind of stem cell research, somatic cell nuclear transfer, is a form of human cloning, which is banned under an amendment to the Missouri Constitution passed in a referendum in 2006.

"The group championing this amendment is taking the first step to controlling and impeding Missouri's research agenda and potential for future research," interim UM system President Gordon Lamb stated in a news release. "And they are doing so in a way that could permanently destroy the future of research in the state and in its universities."

UM system spokesman Scott Charton said Lamb talked to Board of Curators Chairman Don Walsworth before making the statement.

"He (Lamb) thought it was an appropriate time to speak out," Charton said.

The amendment requires that no human blastocyst be produced by fertilization solely for the purpose of stem cell research.

Blastocysts are the stage of the process before the specimen is either implanted into a uterus or used as stem cells. In somatic cell nuclear transfer, the blastocyst is not produced by fertilization.

The initiative proposes that the amendment define cloning as the attempt to create a human being with identical DNA to an existing human through means other than fertilizing a human egg with a sperm.

It also states, "Human life begins with an initial stage, when a single human egg cell receives a complete set of 46 chromosomes, and continues through any subsequent stages of embryonic, fetal, postnatal and later development."

Rep. Judy Baker, D-Columbia, praised Lamb's statement.

"Having a president who has a strong voice in support of both the funding and freedom to do research is important," she said.

MU biology professor Mark Kirk, who has studied stem cells in mice, said no one in Missouri uses somatic cell nuclear transfer stem cells and that the process has never successfully been completed anywhere.

He also said the legislation would not change how stem cell research is conducted in Missouri but would prevent universities and other research institutions from soliciting people to do this kind of research in the future.

"In the end, it is the reputation of the whole state that is at stake here," Baker said.

Cures Without Cloning could not be reached for comment.