I wouldn’t exactly go that far, but another pro-cloning columnist, this time in the KC Star, agrees that the language approved by the Secretary of State on a ballot summary for a human cloning ban is “confusing” and “misleading.” The best part of the whole commentary is where he admits that Amendment 2 did not ban cloning and that its own ballot language was misleading:

her Amendment 2 summary said flatly that the measure would “ban human cloning or attempted cloning,” something the measure did not do, at least as I understand the word “cloning.”

It was clever wording. As I’ll explain, it was correct in a narrow legal sense, but misleading. It has been ruled valid by the courts, which give wide leeway to state officials in this area…

Like the 2006 summary (amendment 2’s deceptive ballot language), the latest synopsis threads the legal needle but creates a misleading impression…

Both the latest summary and that for Amendment 2 conform to the increasingly esoteric vocabulary that has grown up around this issue, starting with the interesting twist on the word “cloning.”

Amendment 2 defined the word in what strikes me as a dodgy way. It asserted that cloning doesn’t begin until an artificially created embryo is implanted in a woman.

Since cloning would be defined as implantation of an embryo, Carnahan — in her Amendment 2 summary — could claim the measure would “ban all human cloning …”

But according to my dictionary, cloning is the process of creating a genetic duplicate “by replacing the nucleus of an unfertilized ovum with the nucleus of a body cell from the [donor] organism.” In plain English, cloning begins with the transfer of the genetic material, not with the implantation of the fertilized egg in a uterus.

Before this debate erupted, most people made the key distinction in reasonably clear language.

Without blushing or shrinking in horror from the C-word, many supporters of stem-cell research explained that they backed therapeutic cloning — with the goal of harvesting stem cells that could cure diseases such as diabetes. Reproductive cloning, which everyone condemned, was aimed at producing a child…

I hope the Cures Without Cloning campaign fails.

But the semantic gamesmanship surrounding this debate is increasingly annoying and incomprehensible, and soon it will be understood only by lawyers.

The latest ballot summary produced by Carnahan’s office only adds to the confusion.

The language sure has changed, only because cloning supporters have to keep coming up with creative ways to make people think that they’re not actually in favor of human cloning.

Pro-cloning author, Bill McClellan of the St. Louis Post also recognized the “fuzzy language” and called on Carnahan to “reverse course.”