Professor of Law, Santa Clara University School of Law

Kerry Lynn Macintosh is a member of the law and technology faculty at Santa Clara University School of Law. She received her B.A. from Pomona College and her J.D. from Stanford Law School, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif. She has published papers and articles in the field of law and technology in journals such as Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, Boston University Journal of Science, and Berkeley Technology Law Journal.  She is the author of Illegal Beings: Human Clones and the Law.

Public attitudes toward human reproductive cloning are negative.  The very idea that cloning might be used to mass-produce human copies provokes hysteria. 

But this hysteria is based on a scientific fallacy.  Genes are not destiny; it is impossible to copy a human being.  A human clone will be an individual, just as identical twins are individuals. 

Nevertheless, through the alchemy of the political process, public hysteria has been transmuted into law.  Several states have outlawed reproductive cloning, and Congress is trying to enact a federal ban.

These laws seek to prevent the existence of a disfavored class (human clones) based on the genetic characteristics of its members.  Thus, laws against cloning are laws against morphological diversity. 

Laws cannot stop human clones from coming into existence.  When cloning becomes safe and effective, it will find a ready market.  Infertile men and women, carriers of heritable diseases, and gays and lesbians are among those who will find cloning a reasonable alternative to sexual reproduction. 

Laws against cloning are bad public policy.  They will send parents to prison for the crime of having the wrong kind of child, stigmatize human clones as unworthy of existence, and undermine our society’s commitment to egalitarianism.