These Babies Don’t Need Big Brother : Cloning: Conceiving twins, whether they’re born together or years apart, is a personal matter.

The government should not interfere with people’s private lives by regulating or banning the cloning of human embryos. Governments already intervene too much in family life.

Now that Dr. Jerry Hall and a team of scientists at George Washington University have cloned a human embryo, control advocates already are complaining about the supposed perils of too much choice and too much family autonomy.

To whom does an embryo belong? An embryo initially belongs to the mother in whose body it was conceived or, if conceived in a test tube, to the couple whose sperm and egg were joined. If an embryo has been “copied” in a test tube through cloning, the resulting embryos still belong to the parental couple.

In complicated cases (such as third-party donors of sperm or eggs), the exact status of an embryo can be determined by the mutual agreement of the conceiving couple. The embryo certainly does not belong to politicians or bureaucrats in Washington.

If cloning is legal, will families use it to do terrible things? I don’t think so. It’s difficult to imagine what could be done that would be so terrible. The possibilities that have been mentioned seem benign. Infertile couples will have extra embryos to use in trying to conceive artificially. Some parents may want a family of unsynchronized twins, triplets or quadruplets--cloned at one point in time, but then stored and born staggered over the years.

Just as human sperm and eggs can be bought today, a market might develop in these stored extra embryos. A childless couple could see what a certain grown child was like and get some sense (but only a partial sense) of what the abilities and temperament of its clone might be.

The biggest fear voiced by cloning critics is loss of individuality and a sense of uniqueness. But we already have twins and triplets naturally. In human history, millions of twins have done just fine without being biologically unique.

But the critics ask, if extra embryos are stored and born later, won’t people have expectations that a later clone will be like an earlier one? Won’t this burden of expectations be too much for a child to bear? I doubt it. Twins today adjust to such expectations. More difficult than having a twin is having illustrious or notorious parents or siblings, yet many children learn to cope with this as well.

Surely the possibility that some people may have expectations about a child is not a sufficient reason to outlaw the birth of that child or restrict the reproductive choices of the parents who want that child.

What about the likelihood of breeding a race of popular culture idols (Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Madonna) or tyrants and criminals (Adolf Hitler, Al Capone)? If someone had a clone of the embryo from which Elvis developed, the result might be a child who looked like Elvis but rebelled against expectations of a show-business career. Heredity is important, but no one should underestimate the importance of experiences, choices and habits of conduct in forming human personalities.

Furthermore, if we acknowledge that popular culture has its idols, we must also remember that civil society has its informal constraints and social pressures. Custom, religion, morals and the scrutiny of friends, neighbors and family will tend to discourage large-scale use of cloning. Yet if a childless couple or someone with a recessive gene that causes a serious disease or defect wants a biologically related child, the people who know the family members will understand and be supportive.

Is cloning somehow interference with human nature? Is cloning dehumanizing? No more than other developments in reproductive medicine. Human clones will be twins; that is all. Except for their mode of conception, they will be normal human beings: They will speak, think thoughts, form concepts and have to judge between right and wrong. We are not talking about humanoid, robotic zombies.

Those who are worried about a “Brave New World” society should remember that in Aldous Huxley’s book, an all-powerful government was in charge of fertility and reproduction. Government control of biology and medicine could be dangerous, but cloning itself is not. Those who fear cloning should also remember that Huxley’s emphasis on biology was misleading. It is political and social institutions that make for slavery, not biology.

We live in a comparatively free society. We enjoy a large measure of reproductive freedom. Let’s not let hysteria over cloning lead to a surrender of our liberties.