enetically; that is well known. More to the point here is the issue of parents trying to use children for parental ends, procreating them with traits chosen by the parents for the purr-poses of the parents, not the welfare of the children. We happily accept twins when they are born, but no parents I have heard of go out of their way to procreate twins, or turn to assisted reproduction specialists to procreate twins.If the cloned children share no other trait than simply looking like the parents (give or take minor variations), then that childs individuality will be compromised. Is it too hard to imagine that a child might not choose to look like a parent, even if most of his other traits are different? As it happens I do not support a ban on cloning. I dont think it could be enforced. I will be satisfied if the federal government does not provide grant money for that purpose, and if most scientists, together with Ian Wilmut [who cloned the sheep Dolly], continue to feel repugnance at the idea (however badly they may articulate their reasons). As for Macklin and Brock, fine and conscientious philosophers, I would hope that they might cast a broader imaginative net as they continue to think about this problem. Kass argues that this is an impossible standard to impose on radically new technologies. He is correct, of course, that we cannot show "demonstrated" harms from an as yet undeveloped and unused technology. But this is not to say we cannot impose reasonable standards on the speculations many opponents of new technologies offer about disasters the technology will bring. There are two aspects to reasonable standards for claims about prospective harms. One concerns a showing about the probability or likelihood that the harms will occur, the other a showing that the feared effects would indeed be serious harms. Even in the absence of experience with the new technology, we can assess the likelihood of causal relati...
