Sometimes it looks hopeless. There are two types of cloning. One involves harvesting stem cells from embryos ("therapeutic cloning"). These are biological equivalent of a template. They can develop into any kind of mature functional cell and thus help cure many degenerative and auto-immune diseases.

The other kind of cloning is much derided in popular culture - and elsewhere - as harbinger of a Brave, New World. A nucleus from any cell of a donor is embedded in an egg whose own nucleus has been removed. The egg is then implanted in a woman's womb and a cloned baby is born nine months later. Biologically, cloned infant is a replica of donor.

Cloning is often confused with other advances in bio-medicine and bio-engineering - such as genetic selection. It cannot - in itself - be used to produce "perfect humans" or select sex or other traits. Hence, some of arguments against cloning are either specious or fuelled by ignorance.

It is true, though, that cloning, used in conjunction with other bio-technologies, raises serious bio-ethical questions. Scare scenarios of humans cultivated in sinister labs as sources of spare body parts, "designer babies", "master races", or "genetic sex slaves" - formerly preserve of B sci-fi movies - have invaded mainstream discourse.

Still, cloning touches upon Mankind's most basic fears and hopes. It invokes most intractable ethical and moral dilemmas. As an inevitable result, debate is often more passionate than informed.

I. Right to Life Arguments

According to cloning's detractors, nucleus removed from egg could otherwise have developed into a human being. Thus, removing nucleus amounts to murder.

It is a fundamental principle of most moral theories that all human beings have a right to life. The existence of a right implies obligations or duties of third parties towards right-holder. One has a right AGAINST other people. The fact that one possesses a certain right - prescribes to others certain obligatory behaviours and proscribes certain acts or omissions. This Janus-like nature of rights and duties as two sides of same ethical coin - creates great confusion. People often and easily confuse rights and their attendant duties or obligations with morally decent, or even with morally permissible. What one MUST do as a result of another's right - should never be confused with one SHOULD or OUGHT to do morally (in absence of a right).

The right to life has eight distinct strains:

IA. The right to be brought to life

IB. The right to be born

IC. The right to have one's life maintained

ID. The right not to be killed

IE. The right to have one's life saved

IF. The right to save one's life (erroneously limited to right to self-defence)

IG. The right to terminate one's life

IH. The right to have one's life terminated

IA. The Right to be Brought to Life

Only living people have rights. There is a debate whether an egg is a living person - but there can be no doubt that it exists. Its rights - whatever they are - derive from fact that it exists and that it has potential to develop life. The right to be brought to life (the right to become or to be) pertains to a yet non-alive entity and, therefore, is null and void. Had this right existed, it would have implied an obligation or duty to give life to unborn and not yet conceived. No such duty or obligation exist.

IB. The Right to be Born

The right to be born crystallizes at moment of voluntary and intentional fertilization. If a scientist knowingly and intentionally causes in vitro fertilization for explicit and express purpose of creating an embryo - then resulting fertilized egg has a right to mature and be born. Furthermore, born child has all rights a child has against his parents: food, shelter, emotional nourishment, education, and so on.

It is debatable whether such rights of fetus and, later, of child, exist if there was no positive act of fertilization - but, on contrary, an act which prevents possible fertilization, such as removal of nucleus (see IC below).

IC. The Right to Have One's Life Maintained

Does one have right to maintain one's life and prolong them at other people's expense? Does one have right to use other people's bodies, their property, their time, their resources and to deprive them of pleasure, comfort, material possessions, income, or any other thing?

The answer is yes and no.

Sometimes it looks hopeless. II. Issues in Calculus of Rights

IIA. The Hierarchy of Rights

All human cultures have hierarchies of rights. These hierarchies reflect cultural mores and lores and there cannot, therefore, be a universal, or eternal hierarchy.

In Western moral systems, Right to Life supersedes all other rights (including right to one's body, to comfort, to avoidance of pain, to property, etc.).

Yet, this hierarchical arrangement does not help us to resolve cases in which there is a clash of EQUAL rights (for instance, conflicting rights to life of two people). One way to decide among equally potent claims is randomly (by flipping a coin, or casting dice). Alternatively, we could add and subtract rights in a somewhat macabre arithmetic. If a mother's life is endangered by continued existence of a fetus and assuming both of them have a right to life we can decide to kill fetus by adding to mother's right to life her right to her own body and thus outweighing fetus' right to life.

IIB. The Difference between Killing and Letting Die

There is an assumed difference between killing (taking life) and letting die (not saving a life). This is supported by IE above. While there is a right not to be killed - there is no right to have one's own life saved. Thus, while there is an obligation not to kill - there is no obligation to save a life.

IIC. Killing Innocent

Often continued existence of an innocent person (IP) threatens to take life of a victim (V). By "innocent" we mean "not guilty" - not responsible for killing V, not intending to kill V, and not knowing that V will be killed due to IP's actions or continued existence.

It is simple to decide to kill IP to save V if IP is going to die anyway shortly, and remaining life of V, if saved, will be much longer than remaining life of IP, if not killed. All other variants require a calculus of hierarchically weighted rights. (See "Abortion and Sanctity of Human Life" by Baruch A. Brody).

One form of calculus is utilitarian theory. It calls for maximization of utility (life, happiness, pleasure). In other words, life, happiness, or pleasure of many outweigh life, happiness, or pleasure of few. It is morally permissible to kill IP if lives of two or more people will be saved as a result and there is no other way to save their lives. Despite strong philosophical objections to some of premises of utilitarian theory - I agree with its practical prescriptions.

In this context - dilemma of killing innocent - one can also call upon right to self defence. Does V have a right to kill IP regardless of any moral calculus of rights? Probably not. One is rarely justified in taking another's life to save one's own. But such behaviour cannot be condemned. Here we have flip side of confusion - understandable and perhaps inevitable behaviour (self defence) is mistaken for a MORAL RIGHT. That most V's would kill IP and that we would all sympathize with V and understand its behaviour does not mean that V had a RIGHT to kill IP. V may have had a right to kill IP - but this right is not automatic, nor is it all-encompassing.

But is Egg - Alive?

This question is NOT equivalent to ancient quandary of "when does life begin". Life crystallizes, at earliest, when an egg and a sperm unite (i.e., at moment of fertilization). Life is not a potential - it is a process triggered by an event. An unfertilized egg is neither a process - nor an event. It does not even possess potential to become alive unless and until it merges with a sperm. Should such merger not occur - it will never develop life.

The potential to become X is not ontological equivalent of actually being X, nor does it spawn moral and ethical rights and obligations pertaining to X. The transition from potential to being is not trivial, nor is it automatic, or inevitable, or independent of context. Atoms of various elements have potential to become an egg (or, for that matter, a human being) - yet no one would claim that they ARE an egg (or a human being), or that they should be treated as one (i.e., with same rights and obligations).

Moreover, it is donor nucleus embedded in egg that endows it with life - life of cloned baby. Yet, nucleus is usually extracted from a muscle or skin. Should we treat a muscle or a skin cell with same reverence critics of cloning wish to accord an unfertilized egg?

Is This Main Concern?

The main concern is that cloning - even therapeutic kind - will produce piles of embryos. Many of them - close to 95% with current biotechnology - will die. Others can be surreptitiously and illegally implanted in wombs of "surrogate mothers".

It is patently immoral, goes precautionary argument, to kill so many embryos. Cloning is such a novel technique that its success rate is still unacceptably low. There are alternative ways to harvest stem cells - less costly in terms of human life. If we accept that life begins at moment of fertilization, this argument is valid. But it also implies that - once cloning becomes safer and scientists more adept - cloning itself should be permitted.