Clones Attack Congress?

Or is it the other way around? Fertility specialist Panos Zavos predicted at a congressional hearing yesterday that a human clone could be born in 2003. It was a perfect example of how congressional hearings have degenerated into fake news events from which both grandstanding congresspeople and those called to testify benefit. Anti-cloning House members got to express cheap moral outrage and would-be cloner Zavos got to advertise his services. Yet in doing so, Zavos was probably giving more than he was getting. Indeed, his antics play directly in the hands of Luddite House members, who want to sensationalize the issue of reproductive cloning and thereby push the Senate to vote for a ban on therapeutic cloning.

In recent years, a lot of ethical handwaving and bloviation has been expended trying to convince the public it would be immoral for a healthy human clone to be born. That case has simply not been made-human reproductive cloning is not inherently immoral . Even the National Bioethics Commission in 1997 determined that reproductively cloning human beings is not per se unethical ; rather, the commission concluded that attempts to clone a child should not proceed at that time since it is not yet a safe procedure.

Despite the current lack of safety, Zavos' erstwhile comrade in cloning, Italian fertility doctor Severino Antinori, has hinted recently that at least one of his patients is pregnant with a clone. If true, that would be a real moral outrage since cloning technology is still so primitive that it is likely that a cloned baby would be born deformed. Yet cloning will almost certainly become safe in the future. Research is shedding ever more light on why so many cloned animals suffer from defects , and that work will lead to ways to get around those obstacles some day.

In the meantime, I'm going to leave Congressional fantasies and fears behind and enjoy the opening day of Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones .