THE CLONING DEBATE : ENGINEERING LIFE PULLS WOOL OVER SCIENTISTS' EYES.

Byline: Daniel Callahan

``THERE is no reason in principle why you couldn't do it.''

That's what Dr. Ian Wilmut, a Scottish embryologist, said of the prospect of cloning a human.

But, said this man who had just successfully cloned a sheep, ``All of us would find that offensive.''

I'm not so certain about that. Surely in the far future a scientist or two will try to clone humans, out of curiosity or a hope for some medical advance. Even more certain, some prospective parent will think this is the perfect way to create a child.

These impulses should be resisted, if not by law, at least by a countervailing social pressure. The message must be simple and decisive: The human species doesn't need cloning. And given the nature of parenthood and the nature of human identity, it will not benefit from it.

Over the past 30 years, we have accepted many different kinds of reproductive technology: in vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood and prenatal genetic testing. Psychologically, for some, cloning may not be such a big step.

Indeed, when cloning began to be heavily debated about 25 years ago, Dr. Leon R. Kass, a humanities professor at the University of Chicago, identified many reasons why people might be drawn to it: a desire to duplicate individuals of great genius to ``improve'' the species; replication to avoid a genetic disease; an urge to re-create someone beloved but dead - or one's partner or one's self.

We should know enough about some contemporary parents to take these last possibilities seriously, just as we should know enough about our individualistic culture to understand how insistent the claim to reproductive freedom can be.

It is hard to say no to those heralding their right to reproductive choice, in the name of improved health for their children or, more primitively, as an absolute right. This is a principle some scientists might want to serve: my self, my body, my reproductive rights.

Good parenting requires a delicate balance between raising children to reflect one's values and respecting individuality. The self-centered parent, unable to distinguish between parent and offspring, robs the child of selfhood.

The cloning of human beings would push this possibility one giant step forward. It would be a profound threat to what might be called the right to our own identity.

True, we are not just our genes; environment, history and cultural context matter. That's why no two people, not even identical twins, are exactly the same.

Still, engineering someone's entire genetic makeup would compromise his or her right to a unique identity.

As Hans Jonas, the late philosopher of biology, wrote in 1974 during the early years of this debate, the person being copied would effectively dictate for the offspring ``all expectations, predictions, hopes and fears, goal settings and disappointments.'' Thus, ``the trial of life has been cheated of its enticing (also frightening) openness; the past has been made to pre-empt the future.''

Our genetic code does not completely determine our human nature. Yet it is important enough to warrant extreme wariness.

Cloning has no good place in human destiny.