Special Session to Fund Human Cloning

December 29, 2006, JEFFERSON CITY, MO – Governor Matt Blunt has announced that he may call a special legislative session to run concurrently with the regular session, which convenes January 3, 2007, to consider legislation to sell $350 million in assets of the state student loan fund to provide funding for life science building projects on state college campuses. The MCC and pro-life groups are gravely concerned that this funding will go towards human cloning experiments because of the passage of Amendment 2 to Missouri’s constitution.

Deacon Larry Weber, Executive Director of the Missouri Catholic Conference, said, “By calling this unheard of special session concurrent with the regular legislative session, Governor Blunt is seeking to head off the growing opposition to state funding for unethical life sciences experiments by moving quickly before the public’s voice is heard. The governor wants the legislature to quickly approve the MOHELA sale before public opposition grows any further.”

The Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority’s (MOHELA) mission is to provide affordable low-interest loans to college students. In order for the sale of MOHELA’s assets to be legal the legislature will have to approve a statute that allows these funds to be used outside the scope of MOHELA’s mission and directed toward construction projects on state college and university campuses while continuing to guarantee the loan agency’s tax-exempt bonding allocations to underwrite additional loans.

The MOHELA sale has been controversial since first proposed by Governor Matt Blunt in 2005. Recently Attorney General Jay Nixon settled a lawsuit against MOHELA’s Board of Directors for 23 Sunshine Law violations for giving improper notice of meetings, posting “inadequate and misleading” meeting agendas, wrongly closing meetings and holding a series of “hub-and-spoke, clandestine communications” among board members that allowed them to secretly reach decisions before their public meetings. Six of MOHELA's seven board members charged by Nixon have since left the agency, most as a result of the controversy surrounding Blunt's plan and Nixon's legal objections.

MOHELA’s assets come from college students paying off loans for attendance at both public andprivate universities like St. Louis University and Rockhurst University in Kansas City. A disproportionate amount of the loans extended by MOHELA are to students at Missouri’s Catholic colleges and universities. However, the sale proceeds will only be used to assist state universities. The private universities that helped to build the wealth of MOHELA will receive no benefits from the MOHELA sale, and, in fact, will be harmed because their students will have fewer options to obtain financial assistance.

The Missouri Catholic Conference sees the MOHELA sale as troubling to all families. This is triple hit on their moral values, their pocketbooks and their hopes for a quality Catholic education for their children. First, the moneys they have paid into MOHELA will be used for human cloning and other unethical research that destroys innocent human lives. Second, it will cost these families more to send their children to college. And third, the assets of MOHELA, which come from their hard-earned dollars, will be sold only for the benefit of state colleges and universities, although Catholic families contributed significantly to the development of these assets.

Amendment 2 passed by about 2% of the over 2 million votes cast. Weber noted that “This certainly does not constitute a mandate. Normally, the legislature supports such a significant expenditure only when there is a reasonable level of consensus. There are many programs that are under-funded at this time. Many low-income parents lost their Medicaid health coverage in 2005 because of a severe state budget shortfall. Yet the governor’s proposal would give speculative life science experiments priority over providing basic health care to the poor, the elderly, veterans and low-income working families.”

Sam Lee, Director of Campaign Life Missouri, said “Pro-life and anti-cloning groups should oppose any attempt by the legislature to authorize the sale of MOHELA assets to build life sciences research labs on Missouri’s colleges and universities where unethical life science experiments like human cloning and embryonic stem cell research might take place.”

Deacon Weber said, “Some suggest that life science research must go forward for the economic progress of our state. But no economic “progress” can justify the taking of any human life. If the research is valid and ethical, it will win the public’s approval in the market and move forward. Why should this particular business – biotech – be singled out for special treatment and taxpayer money? Missouri should not establish a government subsidized life science industry.“