Flyover readers may have noticed that not only have I not commented on the alleged controversy about cloning, I haven’t even covered it. Why? I just don’t think it’s a serious issue at this point; it’s been characterized more by tabloid claims by wack-job “scientists” than by real Dolly-style news in recent months. But that hasn’t stopped the pundits of blogdom, most noticeably Glenn Harlan Reynolds of InstaPundit.com, and James Taranto of OpinionJournal.com’s Best of the Web Today, from contributing to an energetic but mystifying spectacle.
There is apparently some news on the issue revolving around a bill to prohibit human cloning and President Bush’s statement of support for the bill, and this has touched off all the bloviating. For the record, I don’t think the Constitution protects cloning any more than it protects birth-control-by-infanticide (euphemistically known as abortion), and if there is indeed some greater good to be had from allowing therapeutic cloning to take place, we’ll see evidence of it from animal trials and have the opportunity to reverse a ban on the practice in humans.
In the meantime, the issue is more entertainment than anything else, just like the media formats in which human cloning has been familiar lo these many years.
