Bush: human cloning 'deeply troubling,' urges ban. Should we

It's a slap in the face for Judeo/Christian philosophy but banning it shouldn't be based on that premise alone. That the science may be behind the act and may run the risk of mutations is the other consideration -- an irresponsibility factor. Tough one to call because it isn't just the morality of the process. Even if it's technically the same person (in this case a mother), it won't be the same person in the same reality of circumstances and memories. I can see it being banned on the consideration that the science has not been proven and I suppose other countries who now have no laws could, in fact, pass laws. If they don't, we'll be behind them in the science and it could become the norm in the next 100 years. I can't buy that's it's playing God -- that concept was made ridiculous by old 1950's horror science fiction. Our corporations have used science to much worse advantage for humanity, that's for sure.

It isn't a matter of "legislating morality". It's legislating medical practice. If banning cloning is "legislating morality" then so is every other government regulated medical program out there (which pretty much covers all of them!).

I'd having no problem with keeping the government out of the cloning issue as long as they passed a law denying all social and medical benefits to those clones.

Cloning is hardly a "perfected" science. It took over 280 tries to get "Dolly" the sheep cloned into something that actually resembled a sheep. How many 8 legged, 6 armed, brainless kids are you willing to support on the permanent social welfare rolls?

The question has not been asked but why do you believe people would choose cloning as a method of producing a child?

so they can "live forever"

Personal vanity--exactly as Dyslexia has it, to live forever.

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I believe there is nothing intrinsicly wrong with perfecting cloning. It is just another way to have a baby. A clone is not an exact copy of the parent. It is an individual in and of itself. It is no more immortality to the parent than having children to pass on the genes in the usual way. That cloning could be used to engineer a 'master race' remains to be seen. Like any advance in science it has the potential to be good or evil.
If I were religious I would believe that God presented us with genetic material so we could use it. As an atheist, I believe this is one more expression of nature's abhoring a vacuum; life exists whenever and wherever possible.

the very word "cloning" has a variety of meanings, from simple stem cell research to "dolly" the sheep perhaps Bush and his team of zealots are casting a very wide net without a lot of rational thought. but i could be wrong.