It's worth copying Canada's model for cloning legislation

Cloning and the new technologies of human genetic modification are among the most powerful and consequential technologies ever developed. If used wisely they offer new ways to prevent and cure disease, but if abused they could usher in an era of high-tech eugenics that would alter the nature of human life and society forever.

Two constituencies dominate the current debate over cloning and genetic modification: anti-abortion conservatives and biomedical scientists. Not surprisingly, most conservatives want restrictions on these technologies and most scientists don't.

Given this lineup, it's tempting to assume that the current debate is the latest extension of the abortion and embryo research wars. But this is not the case.

Many pro-choice feminists worry about a new eugenics that would commodify and industrialize the process of child-bearing. Environmentalists fear that genetically altered humans would have few qualms about genetically altering the rest of the natural world. Human-rights and civil-rights advocates worry that new eugenic technologies would throw fuel on the flames of racial and ethnic hatred. Disability-rights leaders know that a society obsessed with genetic perfection could regard the...