THOSE WHO REFUSE TO ASK THE QUESTIONS OFT FEAR THE ANSWERS :

Clones Inspire National Endowment for Eggheads (Andrew Ferguson, April 30, 2002, Bloomberg)

Though it has never taken a vote, the panel [the Council on Bioethics] is clearly divided. Five members are themselves scientific researchers who see the creation of cloned embryos as an indispensable weapon in the conquest of disease.

The others -- law professors, social scientists and professional philosophers (nice work if you can get it) -- are harder to pin down, although one faction, led by council Chairman Leon Kass, obviously looks on any cloning, even for research or therapeutic purposes, as a moral calamity.

The scope of their deliberations is always surprising. Last week's sessions, held in the shabby ballroom of an airport hotel, involved presentations from two stem-cell researchers and a third paper from a Yale theologian. Discussions ranged from the neurological intricacies of Parkinson's to the difference between ``motive'' and ``intention.'' Who would expect a government body to wade into such deep waters?

Deep waters, alas, are unavoidable now, as we confront the possibilities presented by genetic science: cloning, ``designer babies,'' and average life spans that are double, or even triple, the ones we currently know. They combine the most profound questions (What is the nature of human nature?) with the most mundane (Should we expand the FDA's police powers?).

Congressmen shouldn't have to answer these questions on their own. It is reassuring to know that Leon Kass and his endowment of deep thinkers are here to help.

The most troubling aspect of the Left/Libertarian opposition to the Council's very existence is that it seems as if the clonophiles are afraid to even consider these questions. It's as if they want to just go ahead and do the research without thinking about it because if they did pause to consider the morality they (and we) might have second thoughts.

That's essentially what happened with abortion in America, when the Supreme Court stripped away all of the thousands of years of moral questions about the sanctity of human life and said : "have at 'em". Thirty million abortions later we look around and wonder what the hell happened to us, how this supposedly limited right turned into a holocaust. And that's why the arguments of the clonophiles are turning to Constitutional grounds--if they can get the Court to rule that any restrictions on cloning are unconstitutional, they can speed up to the process to the point where we'll be knee-deep in mulched embryos, self-aborting fetuses, and nonviable babies before we look around and wonder what we've done.

Of course, by then it will be too late and human life will have been further cheapened and the culture further degraded. They call that progress.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 1, 2002 2:45 PM