> Another factor is religion and religious objections against stuff like this happening or even acknowledging that this is possible. > Some religious people mi

> Another factor is religion and religious objections against stuff like this happening or even acknowledging that this is possible. > Some religious people might find this offensive but biologically cloning a human and a chihuahua is ballpark the same level of complexity. Never mind things like souls, nativity myths, etc. The Catholic Church does indeed oppose genetic engineering human beings and the like for very well-developed ethical reasons. However, I'm not sure where you get the idea that "religious people" find it offensive _that_ human beings can be cloned. Which "religious people"? Certainly, many people find the act of human cloning, among others, offensive, but _that_ a human beings can be cloned? FWIW, the term "religious people" is rather meaningless. It's not a meaningful category in the way it is used here and just used as a vague insinuation that people of a certain stripe (typically Christians) are superstitious people with arbitrary hangups and irrational beliefs (your choice of words says as much: nativity "myths", souls). Religion is just what someone holds to be ultimate reality, the highest good, and aim of life. In that sense, everyone is religious, so it's not a question of _whether_ you're religious, but how, and whether your religion is correct (I know, an unpopular thing to say today, but that's just a feature of tacit modern liberal sentiments and not the product of reason). > Mostly the technical issues that make stuff like this unethical have to do with short term technical challenges [...] Abortions are illegal in a lot of places that euthanize pets and cattle routinely. Why do you think that is? Why do we think that euthanizing non-human animals is morally licit while doing that to a human being isn't? I leave that as an exercise. > We're kind of ethically flexible. Either actions are morally licit or they aren't. To say you're flexible is to say that either you're an immoral person to the degree that you depart from the licit, or that there's no ethical fact of the matter. If there's no ethical fact of the matter, then ethical concerns are pure fiction. You can't have it both ways. Either something is licit or it isn't. It may be determined by circumstance (killing in self-defense), or it may be an absolute (murdering an innocent person), but each concrete action is as such either licit, illicit, or there is no fact of the matter because it is a meaningless category.