Teatro Triste del Clown

So, a company in the USA called Clonaid (winner of the 2001 “Stupidest Name for a Cloning Company Of The Year” Award) is claiming to have succesfully cloned a human being.

Senators and other unsavory types are going berserk, talking about how we need to prevent any more cloning from occuring until we have debated the ethical implications.

History seems to demonstrate that when one society opts to block a direction of scientific inquiry, other societies that do persue that direction of scientific inquiry leapfrog ahead of them. China, for example, banned seafaring at a point in history that prevented them from having any sort of decent navy for over a century. Anyhow, read “Guns, Germs and Steel” for more information along these lines.

I confess, the ethical issues involved in cloning escape me, but I am not a particularly religious person. Heck, the ethical implications of stem cell research escape me, but that is another matter entirely.

So, my question to y’all is: cloning: bad or good?