A senior fellow at the Discovery Institute opened his lecture Thursday night by airing his complaints about the state of Iowa.

“Iowa used to be a leader in biotechnology,” said Wesley J. Smith, an attorney and author. “And by that, I mean it used to outlaw all human cloning.”

Former Gov. Vilsack’s 2006 Condition of the State address was the source of Smith’s ire. In the speech, Vilsack said stem cell research had led to the development of “life-saving treatments” that could not have been anticipated when human cloning was banned in 2002. As such, Vilsack wanted to repeal the 2002 legislation.

Smith said no treatments have been developed from human cloning.

“What Governor Vilsack said was flat-out false – either a lie or utterly ignorant, and shamefully so for a public official,” Smith said.

The debate over human cloning is not a scientific debate, Smith said, but an ethical one.

“Science should tell us the objective facts about what we’re talking about, what it is that’s being created in the cloning of the embryonic stem cell field and, indeed, what scientists who support the research hope to accomplish from it, through it, by it and with it,” he said.

Smith said cloning is best described by the nursery rhyme “Humpty Dumpty” – putting two broken cells back together again. A clone is created when a nucleus is removed from an egg and replaced with a nucleus from a stem cell. Then the egg is catalyzed with electricity, which can mimic fertilization if successful.

“You often hear there’s something called a fertilized egg – that’s actually a misnomer. Once the egg is fertilized, it’s not an egg, it’s a human being – at least if you read embryology textbooks,” he said.

President Bush’s ban on research of embryonic stem cells created after Aug. 9, 2001, was not the first legislation restricting stem cell research. The Dickey Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds to destroy human embryos, was signed into law by President Clinton in 1996.

However, Smith said Clinton used “Clinton-esque” techniques to maneuver around the law. Clinton authorized the use of private funds to destroy the embryos while maintaining federal funding for the research.

“In a sense, it was certainly following the letter of the Dickey Amendment, but not the spirit,” Smith said.

Bush rescinded Clinton’s executive order within his first year in office. Bush’s rationale was that he believed other methods for stem cell research existed that did not involve “destroying human life.”

“Guess what? It turns out that President Bush – ‘dummy’ – was right,” Smith said.

Smith said research involving induced pluripotent stem cells is the type of research Bush was talking about. Pluripotent cells are created by introducing certain types of genes into a skin cell. The resulting pluripotent cells can take on the characteristics of any human cell. Smith said James Thompson, the so-called father of embryonic stem cell research, said these pluripotent cells have just as much clinical potential as embryonic cells.

Smith said pluripotent cells could lead to regenerative medicine that could rebuild diseased or damaged body parts.

Dana Morrone, graduate student in biochemistry, biophysics and molecular biology, took issue with some of Smith’s lecture.

“His argument rests on the assumption that life begins, apparently for him, at conception – that moment of fertilization. My greater question is, how does he know that for sure? And since he was using so many findings from science for his case, what scientific evidence could he possibly present supporting his viewpoint that life begins at conception?” Morrone said. “Sure, there are scientists in the field who believe that, but there are also scientists in the field who do not.”