Gallup Poll: Cloning Still Unpopular

Posted by Pete Shanks June 1, 2011
Biopolitical Times

The annual Gallup poll about Moral Issues has just been released, and the results follow well-established trends. Americans in general are strongly opposed to the reproductive cloning of humans (84% opposed) and somewhat less opposed to cloning animals (62% opposed). We do, however, support medical research that uses stem cells obtained from human embryos, by a margin of 62–30.

Gallup has been conducting essentially the same poll every May since 2002. The results of those 10 polls, and another conducted in November 2004, can be found here. The numbers considering cloning "morally wrong" have fluctuated between 84 and 90%; those who consider it "morally acceptable" range from 7% to 12%. This year's numbers are, by a tiny amount, outliers: the lowest disapproval yet. That might be worth watching, since people under 35 are somewhat more tolerant of cloning than those older than 35; there is a difference of 9 percentage points. That's far less than the difference in attitudes about homosexuality, pornography or premarital sex, and still leaves cloning opposed by about four to one.

CGS has a large collection of opinion polls, some dating back to the early 1990s. Those on human cloning and inheritable genetic modification are summarized here; those related to animals are here.

Previously on Biopolitical Times: