Outspent by millions of dollars but hoping for a grass-roots-driven victory, opponents of a November ballot proposal to protect stem cell research in Missouri are ramping up their advertising campaigns.

Yesterday, radio ads produced by Missourians Against Human Cloning began airing statewide. The radio spots join a statewide billboard campaign by Missouri Roundtable for Life that links the proposal to the exploitation of women whose eggs, the group says, would be purchased to harvest the embryos needed for the disputed research technique.

The billboards warn commuters in Kansas City and St. Louis that "cloners will pay women for eggs with tax dollars." Another urges taxpayers to "Wake up. We will pay for cloning forever."

The radio ads feature J. Michael Conoyer, a St. Louis ear, nose and throat doctor, urging a woman portraying his patient to oppose Amendment 2, which he tells her will "allow cloning of human embryos for the sole purpose of destroying them for research."

"We’re gearing up," said Jaci Winship, executive director of Missourians Against Human Cloning. "We’re trying to use our resources wisely."

Winship’s group had raised $245,177 through June, the most recent reporting period, and had $49,654 on hand. The Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures, by contrast, had raised more than $16 million in that same period, with $3.298 million on hand.

That large bankroll - the vast majority supplied by 82-year-old Kansas City billionaire James Stowers Jr., the founder of American Century Investments - has allowed amendment supporters to purchase their own billboard messages and TV ads throughout Missouri. Those depict researchers, patients and politicians touting the potential of embryonic stem cells to eventually generate treatment and cures for a host of incurable diseases.

Donn Rubin, the coalition’s chairman, blasted the opponents’ new ad campaign as "a deliberate attempt to mislead voters." The proposed amendment to the Missouri Constitution involves no expense of tax dollars, he said. "They obviously have little shame when it comes to respect for the truth," Rubin said.

The amendment stipulates that "no person may, for valuable consideration, purchase or sell human blastocysts or eggs for stem cell research or stem cell therapies and cures."

Valuable consideration is further defined as "financial gain or advantage," but does not include "reimbursement for reasonable costs incurred in connection with the removal, processing, disposal, preservation, quality control, storage, transfer or donation" of human eggs. It also exempts money paid to egg donors by fertility clinics.

That loophole will allow those who covet eggs for research to take advantage of needy women who can sell their eggs to a fertility clinic, said Fred Sauer, treasurer of the Missouri Roundtable for Life.

"You are creating a constitutional right to pay women for their eggs using fertility clinics as a middleman," he said.

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