Scientists have proposed to use the sentence "somatic cell nuclear transfer" instead of "cloning" when addressing the use of stem cells from cloned embryos.
This is supposed to differentiate this technique from cloning to produce a human being.
As it turns out though, approval ratings went up dramatically when people were asked if they were in favor of deriving stem cells from embryos produced by cloning when the word "cloning" was not mentioned. However, SCNT does not limit itself to therapeutic cloning, but can also be used to create babies. So when researchers asked if people were in favor of creating babies using SCNT approval ratings went up as well.
The question I'd like to ask is whether the researchers explained what SCNT means? What is concerning though is that people seem to approve of something even though they have no clue what they are approving of. So do we say yes to anything we do not understand just because we want to appear "smart"? Perhaps it is society's responsibility to ask more questions before saying "yes"...
Any thoughts on this out there?
