Tad Cronn, an assistant copy desk chief at the Los Angeles Daily News, today published a ridiculous and counter-factual op-ed piece attacking Proposition 71, the stem cell initiative, on the November 2nd California ballot.

It deserves some scrutiny.

In this op-ed article, innocuously entitled Prop. 71 double threat: Taxpayers, ethics suffer, Mr. Cronn writes:

"The proposition goes on to initially ban research with adult stem cells and umbilical cord stem cells, which, technically speaking, are the only kinds of stem cells that have produced any significant results and which -- again, picking nits -- have numerous advantages over embryonic stem cells."

Proposition 71 explicitly legalizes embryonic stem cell research and it prioritizes this kind of research above investigations involving adult or umbilical cord stem cells. It nowhere bans research with adult stem cells and umbilical cord stem cells.

The author writes that:

(And if we can clean out the fridge at fertility clinics while making a whole bunch of unelected bureaucrats, doctors and business people $3 billion richer in the process, so much the better.)

He's right that research scientists and the bio-tech entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who stand to make billions from the publicly-financed research authorized by Proposition 71 and who have provided the bulk of the money that qualified it for the ballot and now pay for the ads supporting it, will be at least $3 billion dollars richer if this initiative passes. But bureaucrats?

Apparently facetiously, the op-ed writer suggests that:

"…we could skirt that whole issue [of "racial" discrimination against embryos] by simply declaring embryos an entirely different species (although then we'd have to buy off the wrath of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). It should be simple: Just demonstrate the clearly vast genetic differences between embryos and "real" humans.

What "differences"? Embryos and so-called "real" humans have the same genetic make-up. Cloned embryos, of course, except for their mitochondrial DNA, have exactly the same genetic make-up as the "real" humans whose cells are used in their cloning.

Concluding with an incredible leap of illogic, the author writes:

"Maybe we could spare a few of these embryos -- there are bound to be extras -- and let them mature so they could be of use in the service industries. I'm sure there must be some cotton fields that need a-pickin' around here somewhere."

Shouldn't it be obvious that doing this would require not just the amending of the California Constitution, as Proposition 71 does, but the repeal of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which provides:

"Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

Not to mention that, through publicly-funded research long ago appropriated by private corporations, cotton harvesting has been completely automated and no longer requires the handwork that Mr. Cronn suggests as a way of employing surplus embryos, once they've "matured," whatever that means.

There are plenty of reasons to oppose Proposition 71, but getting basic facts about it wrong makes it hard to take such an erroneous critique of it seriously.

For a recent, well-reasoned, and well-written editorial which takes the same substantive position as the one advocated by Mr. Cronn, and urges Governor Schwarzenegger to weigh in against Proposition 71 (which he declined yesterday to do, instead endorsing it), appearing in the same Los Angeles Daily News that printed Mr. Cronn's piece, click here.

For a variety of additional pieces about, and against, Proposition 71, click here.

For an extended and exclusive interview with a pioneering embryonic stem cell researcher who thinks that Proposition 71 is a "brilliant" plan and who says he'll be building another corporate headquarters for his company in California in order to take advantage of it, click here.