(a) "Human cloning" means CREATING OR ATTEMPTING TO CREATE A HUMAN BEING BY USING THE somatic cell nuclear transfer PROCEDURE FOR THE PURPOSE OF, OR TO IMPLANT, THE RESULTING PRODUCT TO INITIATE A PREGNANCY THAT COULD RESULT IN THE BIRTH OF A HUMAN BEING.

What does that mean in plain English?  Cloning is only illegal if it's used to create a pregnancy. Want to grow spare parts?  That's OK.  Create a human being for the expressed purpose of experimentation that'll kill it?  Sure, that's just fine.

Now the companion bills are on their way through the House.  The first is posted on the House website here.  HB4616 opens the door for the destruction of human life right here in Michigan for nontherapeutic research.  

Anytime people discuss this issue I remember some history classes in high school and college.  The Germans, folks discovered after World War II, had been doing more than interning and murdering Jews.  They'd done a lot of experiments.  Used human beings as guinea pigs.  

The decision was made at the time that all of their research would never be examined but destroyed immediately.  The benefits of their discoveries, no matter how great, could never overcome the way they were made.  Human life is not a means to an end.  

What made such simple sense to world leaders in the 1940s is like a foreign language to politicians today eager to trade the defense of human life for a soundbyte and a voting block.  Even worse, they've been taken advantage of by their new special interest group.
I don't doubt a poll on the issue would show an overwhelming majority of people in the United States believe embryonic stem research has resulted in amazing cures and benefits and holds the promise for countless more.  That couldn't be more wrong.  

The truth is this, embryonic stem cell research has yielded approximately... wait for it... zero (!) cures and treatments.  But that's not to say stem cell research is pointless.  Adult and cord blood stem cells continue to yield cures and treatments.  Here you'll find a peer reviewed sample, just a portion of the advances already made without the destruction of a single human life.  There are 179 treatments listed here and it's by no means complete.

If Andy Meisner and Gretchen Whitmer were serious about cures, if they were serious about making Michigan a national leader in stem cell research and if they were serious about protecting human beings they'd be out there pushing adult cell research.  But they're not.  It just doesn't focus group as well.  

Other sponsors of the new House legislation include:

Pam Byrnes, Alma Smith, Rebekah Warren, Joan Bauer, Ted Hammon, Marie Donigan, Barbara Farrah, Hoon-Yung Hopgood, Matthew Gillard, Andy Coulouris, Steve Tobocman, Brenda Clack, Robert Jones, Aldo Vagnozzi, Kathleen Law, Richard Hammel, Lee Gonzales, Gino Polidori, Doug Bennett, Fred Miller, Coleman Young, Gabe Leland and George Cushingberry.