Outlaw human cloning

This editorial is from the Deseret News, the newspaper owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's editorials, however, are not dictated by the church, which has not taken any official stand on the cloning issue.

I wrote the following response in a letter to the editor:

Your editorial on cloning includes the following argument:

"Without question, cloning research could do much good, perhaps bringing cures and treatments to many. But it comes far too close to an ethical line that separates research for a greater good from research that sacrifices one good in pursuit of another. Underlying the current discussion is the fact that science knows very little about cloning's long-term effects."

What you seem to be saying is "Yes, it could have huge benefits, but because we don't know enough about it, we shouldn't do any more research." That makes no sense. If we don't know enough about it, we should proceed carefully to expand our knowledge, rather than simply rejecting the whole idea out of hand.

There are two types of cloning under discussion, reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning. The first is the stuff of science fiction, copying a living person or making many identical "twins" from a single embryo. Your argument citing the lack of knowledge about long term effects of cloning is cogent with respect to reproductive cloning, because it has the potential of bringing children into this world with genetic defects which
could make their lives miserable and tragic.

Therapeutic cloning is done for the purpose of obtaining stem cells which can then theoretically be used to grow new tissues to treat disease or injuries. This type of cloning does not have the possibility of producing deformed babies, since since no embryos are implanted in women or brought to term. This research could be a blind alley, but it could also open a way to treat and cure diseases like diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. We just don't know enough yet to tell.

The real issue is whether using fertilized ova, such as those which would otherwise be discarded, to obtain stem cells through cloning is somehow equivalent to killing babies to obtain organs for transplant. I don't think this makes any more sense than saying that transplanting organs from people who have recently died is a violation of the sanctity of life. If we had banned transplantation when it began being investigated because we didn't know enough about its potential problems, there would be thousands more lives cut short by organ failures, which today can be saved.