Of course, not all observers tried to put a good face on the Korean scandal. The chief editorial writer for The Independent in the UK, Mary Dejevsky, welcomed the news as an opportunity to take “a long second look… at this whole area of science”. She fears a return of eugenics when scientists eventually master the technology for therapeutic cloning.

Until now, the stem-cell pioneers and gene-therapy proponents have been extraordinarily successful in ignoring all links between their research and the earth 20th century pursuit of eugenics,” she writes. “If you want to split hairs, you could say that the quest then was to improve the human race, whereas now it is to improve each individual, one by one. But the implications are surely the same: the exclusion, demonising or destruction of those who do not, or cannot be made to, fit.”

And bioethics writer Wesley J. Smith, writing in the Weekly Standard, called for a review of “how science’s core values of integrity and objectivity are being corroded by the passionate political pursuit of a legal license to clone.”

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Michael Cook

Michael Cook edits BioEdge, a bioethics newsletter, and MercatorNet, an on-line magazine whose focus is human dignity. He writes from Sydney, Australia.

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