Cloning and the Debate on Abortion

Italian fertility specialist Severino Antinori has announced that he will begin human cloning in early 2002. Two hundred couples desperately seeking to create children will become human guinea pigs in a massive experiment. The odds are not in their favor. In animals, cloning currently only results in a successful pregnancy 3 to 5 percent of the time. And, even in those rare instances, many of the resulting offspring suffer. One-third die shortly before or right after birth. Other cloned animals seem perfectly healthy at first and then suffer heart and blood vessel problems, underdeveloped lungs, diabetes, immune system deficiencies and severe growth abnormalities.

If an infectious disease were killing one-third of human infants, we would declare it a public health emergency. We certainly wouldn’t set up a clinic to enable it to happen. Yet despite these grave risks, only five states have laws banning human cloning. There is no federal law on the subject yet. Despite widespread public opposition to human cloning, various researchers and biotech companies have so far prevented the passage of such a law.

This summer, however...