With the speed of the advances with this can someone tell me why banning reproductive cloning is

good? I mean we have a chance to make gender meaningless. Same sex couples could have their child with nothing from anyone else, single people who want a child could be both the "mother" and "father" of their child with no help from either a man or a woman. I don't father or raise children but for those who want to why should we not allow them the advancements science can one day offer?


http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/genetics/2008-01-17-cloned-embryos-men_N.htm?csp=34

By Malcolm Ritter, Associated Press
NEW YORK — Scientists in California say they have produced embryos that are clones of two men, a potential step toward developing scientifically valuable stem cells.

The new report documents embryos made with ordinary skin cells. But it's not the first time human cloned embryos have been made. In 2005, for example, scientists in Britain reported using embryonic stem cells to produce a cloned embryo. It matured enough to produce stem cells, but none were extracted.

Stem cells weren't produced by the new embryos either, and because of that, experts reacted coolly to the research.

"I found it difficult to determine what was substantially new," said Doug Melton of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. He said the "next big advance will be to create a human embryonic stem cell line" from cloned embryos. "This has yet to be achieved."

Dr. George Daley of the Harvard institute and Children's Hospital Boston called the new report interesting but agreed that "the real splash" will be when somebody creates stem cell lines from cloned human embryos.

But, I have seen ethical questions raised about the first clones amounting to experiments on human beings, experiments that can be catastophic for the cloned person. I believe that many animal clones have problems with disease, etc. These concerns may disappear if animal cloning reaches a state where the cloned animal is able to live a "normal" life and there is a high degree of certainty that the skills involved in animal cloning can be transferred to human cloning.

Some religions, of course, have objections to cloning humans. I don't believe their objections should be able to attain the force of law.

Cloning- advancing the legacy of Appalachia

Would you want chimp's Rove company cloning themselves with your tax dollars, and rigging elections for the next 300 years. Do not say they are not already trying.

Clones tend to have a lot of birth defects and live short lives. It would be unethical to do so at the current state of the art.

The more insidious danger is people would use clones as personal organ banks.

If we limit that diversity we may doom the future of species to whatever flaws the clones develop. That's especially important in crops.