Why is human cloning banned?

[Mijin]

Don’t you hate it when you forget that you’ve posted on a thread, and then, weeks later, you stumble across the thread, and see that someone has got away with dissing your arguments?

What would you do? Post to the thread anyway?

Well, that’s what I’m doing here

@Onomatopoeia

You couldn’t bring back Hitler. Even with a viable sample to clone from, and taking as a given that we’ve achieved the level of technical sophistication required to successfully clone a human being, the result would simply be a guy who’s the genetic twin of Hitler. He’d have his own personality, his environment and influences would be different than his donor’s, and because of diet, exercise (or lack thereof) fashion, and other factors, he probably wouldn’t even look much like the Hitler we know.

That’s what I meant by “it probably wouldn’t ‘work’”.
And the only reason I couched it in “probably” was because I don’t claim to know to what extent we are shaped by nature versus nurture. Especially considering that many studies in recent years have come down on the side of nature.
You on the other hand, clearly know different.

Mijin - “I suppose you could imagine a community of clones finding little incentive to integrate with outsiders, because they get on so well with their own kind.”

Do adoptees do this? Why would a clone? I don’t know what you mean by “get on so well with their own kind.” It’s not like there’s any visible attribute that would stigmatize a clone. A clone would never even know he/she were a clone unless they were told, and even then it’d probably be difficult to convince them of it.

For example: imagine we decide to clone a person who happens to have a remarkably high IQ. These clones prove very helpful to mankind, so we clone more and more. But a community of such people might resent having to associate with us “simpletons”, and eventually break away to pursue their own goals, some of which may be to the detriment of the population at large.
Of course, groups isolating themselves or acting against the common good happens all the time with ordinary humans. It’s just that widespread cloning could add a whole new dimension to this problem.

I’m guessing that your response to this might be “well, how likely’s that to happen”? But I don’t claim it’s likely, I was just spitballing fears that people might have about cloning, and this is a common one I think, because it’s common in science-fiction for example.

But forget about the extreme scenario, consider this:
We clone someone.
If our choice of “someone” is random, then the situation is not too different to normal procreation. But why would we bother to do this?
On the other hand, if we specify it has to be this person, then clearly there is an ulterior motive here; we have a role in mind for the child. And most of us find the idea of assigning a role for an unborn child to be contemptible.

[Icerigger]

The real reason is religion. Check out the president’s council on Bio-ethics. Almost the entire panel has ties to Catholic organizations and their recommendations are straight of out Catholic theology almost word for word. Google Leon Kass, what a loon, believes suffering is a very good thing. Steven Pinker gave testimony on this nonsense recently.

Leon Kass