French President Jacques Chirac is hosting a conference of 20 European nations to consider a continental cloning ban. Any resulting treaty would also be open to American and Canadian endorsement. Europe's anti-cloners fear that cloning will alter the human gene pool. But the threat of scientific abuse is not sufficient justification for outlawing a technique that has tremendous potential to alleviate human suffering. To extend and save lives, society already permits eye glasses, open-heart surgery and radiation therapy.
Technology is never, in itself, a curse.
How we use our tools is the measure of humanity, and cloning is a tool that can do much good. Take the problem of infertility. A cloned child would certainly be the result of careful genetic engineering. But so are the children of in vitro fertilization, and America welcomed the McCaughey septuplets without distinction from naturally conceived infants. Thus Seed's proposed clinic.