A recent UPI news report states that "Members of an American Medical Association ethics panel today [June 15, 1998] said they could not find any acceptable reason for cloning a human being..."
What are these people? Stupid?
The article continued to say that the members (correctly) said that cloning could be used for the purpose of growing replacement tissues and organs (without actually growing a whole person), but that's about all they saw it good for.
The committee said, "Human cloning as an approach to fertility has ethical hazards in the areas of individual autonomy, privacy and informed consent. It also raises difficult and unresolved legal questions and even more difficult psychosocial problems about family and other social relations."
Again... What are these people? Stupid?
Okay, so it's a given that there shouldn't be cloning clinics just like there are sperm banks. Cloning, when done, should be with full knowledge and approval of those being cloned. But what is all this nonsense about autonomy, legality, and psychosocial problems?
There are so many misconceptions about what cloning is that I'm afraid even the AMA is confused. It sounds like they feel that creating a clone is creating an exact duplicate of a person. This is only true from a genetic standpoint. But a person is far more than just genetics. Having a clone of oneself would be no different than having an identical twin. Except that, unless the tissue was cloned shortly after birth, the clone would be significantly younger.
What makes us individuals is not our genetic makeup, our physical appearance, but our minds. A clone would not have the same mind as the original. It would grow and develop its own personality. Just like twins do. So where are the issues surrounding legality? It's a different person. And psychosocial? I fail to see where the problem is.
Proposed bans on cloning are ludicrous. Also futile. Like abortion, banning the act won't stop it. Back alley cloning shops would spring up. It's not like the technology is all that difficult, after all.
Rather than trying to determine an "acceptable reason for cloning a human being," perhaps the AMA should focus instead on trying to find any valid reasons why we shouldn't. To my mind, there are none, so long as we treat clones as what they would be: human beings, just like you and me.