Cloning ban law likely not legal, trial judge says
By AP,
Associated Press
| 12. 31. 2008
JEFFERSON CITY (AP) - A Missouri trial judge said yesterday that a state constitutional amendment endorsing stem cell research likely creates problems for a law set up to award life science research grants.
At issue in the case before Cole County Circuit Judge Richard Callahan is whether state grants for life sciences research can be spent on stem cell research. Critics of embryonic stem cell research have filed suit seeking to block $21 million from going toward the research grants.
The money is to flow from the Life Sciences Research Trust Fund to the Life Sciences Research Board and is distributed as research grants. The trust fund was created in 2003 to spend one-quarter of Missouri’s annual proceeds from a legal settlement between states and tobacco companies. The law that created the trust fund specifically bars use of the money for abortion services and human cloning.
The lawsuit contends those restrictions were trumped by a 2006 voter-approved amendment to the Missouri Constitution guaranteeing that any stem cell research legal under federal law is also legal in the state. That allows...
Related Articles
By Katherine Long, Ben Foldy, and Lingling Wei, The Wall Street Journal | 12.13.2025
Inside a closed Los Angeles courtroom, something wasn’t right.
Clerks working for family court Judge Amy Pellman were reviewing routine surrogacy petitions when they spotted an unusual pattern: the same name, again and again.
A Chinese billionaire was seeking parental...
By David Jensen, The California Stem Cell Report | 12.11.2025
California’s stem cell and gene therapy agency today approved spending $207 million more on training and education, sidestepping the possibility of using the cash to directly support revolutionary research that has been slashed and endangered by the Trump administration.
Directors...
By Sarah Kliff, The New York Times | 12.10.2025
Micah Nerio had known since his early 30s that he wanted to be a father, even if he did not have a partner. He spent a decade saving up to pursue surrogacy, an expensive process where he would create embryos...
Several recent Biopolitical Times posts (1, 2, 3, 4) have called attention to the alarmingly rapid commercialization of “designer baby” technologies: polygenic embryo screening (especially its use to purportedly screen for traits like intelligence), in vitro gametogenesis (lab-made eggs and sperm), and heritable genome editing (also termed embryo editing or reproductive gene editing). Those three, together with artificial wombs, have been dubbed the “Gattaca stack” by Brian Armstrong, CEO of the cryptocurrency company...
