Oh, those crazy scientists

What's the difference between “cloning” and “somatic cell nuclear transfer”? Roughly double the public approval rating, according to New Scientist magazine. The article reports on research by Kathy Hudson of the Genetics and Public Policy Center in Washington DC, who discovered that while 29% of Americans approve of deriving stem cells from embryos produced by cloning, a whopping 46% were comfortable with deriving stem cells from embryos derived by SCNT.

Better yet, as New Scientist notes:

SCNT would also be used in any attempt to clone a human being, so Hudson also asked about creating babies using SCNT. This too raised the approval rate from 10 per cent to 24 per cent - which is not what scientists had in mind.

I’m not sure who in this farrago comes off as more pitiable, the gullible public who haven’t understood, or the naive scientists who think they can make effective propagandists.

And in further answer to my opening question, pedants of course know that SCNT (is that almost pronounceable?) is merely one form, a subset if you will, of cloning. And waiter, another glass of your finest mechanical meristem transfer derived wine.