I'll try to get some posting done today. In the meantime, though, Owen Courreges takes on Glenn Reynolds, Michael Morgan, and Bo Cowgill on cloning.

With the recent blustering by Clonaid that a cloned child has already been born, the issue of reproductive cloning has come to the forefront. For the most part there is general agreement that reproductive cloning -- bringing a cloned infant to term -- is an ethical nightmare and should rightfully be outlawed. This is certainly my view, and I have naively believed it to be universally intuitive. However, it has come to my attention that at least two of the web logs I link to, those of Glenn Reynolds and Michael Morgan, take the opposite stance.


I think support for reproductive cloning is downright sociopathic, so I feel obligated to put forth the argument as to just why it is so awful. To begin with, I suggest that anyone interested in the subject read two crucial reports: Scientific and Medical Aspects of Human Reproductive Cloning (2002) from the National Academy of Sciences, and Cloning Human Beings (June 1997) from the National Bioethics Advisory Commission. Both of these reports outline key reasons why reproductive cloning should be outlawed.

But now for my own contentions...[more]


How is harm "wrong?" If it isn't self-evident, where are we in any moral argument? On the issue of reproductive cloning, the overwhelming majority of the population agrees that it is morally wrong and should thus be illegal. All rights-based theories, like all morality, eventually comes down to core moral assumptions which cannot be proven on a slide rule. To wit, if I were arguing with a moral relativist (i.e. on who believes there is no universal morality) who contended that the Holocaust wasn't an immoral act because morality is based on personal and cultural prejudices, I would simply have to fall back on self-evident truths. [more]