Harkin’s reply is, indeed, not surprising. Lawmakers are famously (and often willfully) ignorant when it comes to the science of embryonic stem cells, as I noted in this piece in April. I’ll give a synopsis right here.

You may remember John Edwards’s famous and stupid claim that embryonic stem-cells could make Christopher Reeve “rise and walk.” Sen. Charles Schumer actually told a constituent this spring that he had met two people who had been cured by embryonic stem-cells — which would be difficult, because no such person exists on earth today.

Returning to Harkin’s home state of Iowa, former Gov. Tom Vilsack actually said, in his state of the state address in 2006, that embryonic stem-cell cures had already been developed:

Well, they have been [developed], and as a result we should revisit our ban on nuclear cell transplants. We should remove the restrictions and allow life-saving treatments to be administered to Iowans here in Iowa rather than forcing them to leave our state.

Needless to say, no such cures existed. But in the subsequent debate over repealing the state’s cloning ban, Iowa legislators showed similar levels of scientific ignorance. State House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (D.) e-mailed a constituent, claiming that his cloning bill would not permit cloning. Here is what he wrote:

The bill would allow research that leads to the following; allowing a nucleus from one of these billions of cells (taken from the skin or an eyelash or a fingernail for example) from a specific donor in need of medical treatment———- and then to be transferred to a receptor cell where…in a Petrie dish, cells that exactly match that particular donor are then extracted.

I did not add that ellipsis, or that weird long line – McCarthy wrote it in the original. He apparently used the ellipsis to skip over the important part, in which the “receptor cell” he refers to turns out to be a human egg whose nucleus has been removed. In the process of somatic-cell nuclear transfer (cloning), the egg receives its new nucleus and begins dividing and developing into a full-grown baby.

McCarthy also went on in this e-mail to assert that scientists have already found from animal experiments that the embryonic cells “can be used to create replacement livers or hearts” for sick patients — simply a lie.

State Rep. Patrick Murphy (D) wrote to a constituent this, even more humorous explanation of how no embryos would be involved:

somatic cell nuclear transfer, which is what this legislation would permit, authorizes the creation of embryonic stem cell lines, which are not even close to actual embryos. There is no sperm involved in somatic cell nuclear transfer, so there can be no embryo.

So what he’s saying is that they can “create” “embryonic stem-cell lines” without embryos. That would be very interesting to see. And Murphy’s idea that “no sperm” translates to “no embryo” is absurd – the whole idea of cloning is that one can produce an embryo without fertilization. (Yet I should note that two actual scientists at the University of Nebraska Medical Center — James Turpen and David Crouse, who should know better — passed along the same lie in order to prevent their state from banning human cloning. That’s called “willful ignorance” or even “deliberately spreading ignorance.”)

Anyway, in short, an “F” in college biology appears to be a requirement for membership in the Iowa Democratic Party. So Harkin’s statement comes as no suprise. It’s very funny how liberals claim that “science” and “reason” are on their side, yet they suddenly play dumb (or are dumb) about science when discussing issues surrounding the basic biology of human life.