We view with concern the widespread calls to delay, defund, or discontinue cloning research, which have come from sources as disparate as President Bill Clinton in the United States, President Jacques Chirac of France, former Prime Minister John Major of Great Britain, and the Vatican in Rome. We believe that reason is humanity's most powerful tool for untangling the problems that it encounters. But reasoned argument has been a scarce commodity in the recent flood of attacks on cloning. Behind the most vituperative critiques seems to lie the assumption that human cloning would raise moral issues more profound than those faced in connection with any previous scientific or technological development. Some religions teach that human beings are fundamentally different from other mammals - that humans have been imbued with immortal souls by a deity, giving them a value that cannot be compared to that of other living things.
Human nature is held to be unique and sacred.
Deeply rooted as such ideas may be in dogma, we question whether these should be used to decide whether human beings will be permitted to benefit from new biotechnology. As far as the scientific enterprise can determine, Homo sapiens is a member of the animal kingdom. Human capabilities appear to differ in degree, not in kind, from those found among the higher animals. Humankind's rich repertoire of thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and hopes seems to arise from electrochemical brain processes, not from an immaterial soul that operates in ways no instrument can discover. Surely everyone has the right to be heard.