Wired reports that it’s not presently possible to clone humans without serious genetic damage. Here are the political implications for the cloning debate:

The study, however, has no impact on so-called therapeutic cloning, the researchers said. Researchers hope one day to use cloning technology to develop treatments or cures for various diseases. A bill that would ban the procedure languished in Congress this summer.

“It is important to remember that embryonic stem cells when combined with normal cells ?- as is the case with cell therapy — may function fine,” Jaenisch said.

Berg emphasized this point, and added that because lawmakers entwined the two types of cloning in their legislation, the United States is left with no regulation at all.

“It looks to me that this issue is dead for this session of Congress,” he said. “That means at the moment there’s no legislation for continuing to do therapeutic cloning, or even to clone a person, which is stupid. They should have passed a prohibition on cloning people and let it go at that.”

There’s another problem. The results of this study cannot, and do not, prove that we will never be able to clone humans–just that we don’t know enough to do so safely at present. But many of the arguments against human cloning don’t even center on the viability of the process. Even if it can be done safely, many still think that it should be illegal (which is one of the reasons that the two types of cloning became intertwined–the opponents simply opposed cloning of all forms on raw religious grounds).

If we are going to legislate this issue, we should at least attempt to separate out not only the two types of cloning, but also separate out the rationales for outlawing it, or not. If it’s for religious reasons, then circumstances will never change (at least for the people who are opposed to it for that reason, barring a conversion to another belief system), but if it’s because we simply want to avoid creating unhealthy people, then that’s not an argument against cloning per se. It’s just an argument against doing it badly, and as our understanding of the process improves over time, and we develop the necessary confidence in our ability to clone healthy humans, the issue should be revisited, because banning it does in fact entail a cost in fundamental human freedom.

For instance, legislation based on current flaws in the process, as described in this research, might be sunsetted, expiring in, say, five or ten years, at which point Congress would have to redebate it in the context of the state of the technology at that time. If the arguments against it are then not sufficiently strong, we could revert back to the current default (that which is not illegal is legal).

But if we’re going to put into place legislation that bans it for all time (at least until new legislation can be passed undoing the ban), then those proposing it should have to make that case, and this research result, which may be ephemeral, shouldn’t be allowed to help justify such a law.