More -- I'll put this delicately -- goddamn stupid idiocy against cloning on National Review Online.

Wesley J Smith, speaking ex cathedra, I guess, has lots of not-so-new, not-so-well-thought-out, little "arguments."

He starts:

"Cloning apologists remind me of that philandering husband. Their opponents point out that a cloned human embryo is a human life, and the cloners reply with: 'Human life? What human life?'"

Let's go back to the birds and bees, Wesley. Human life happens when a boy and a girl (who love each other very much and within the legal strictures of heterosexual marriage) get all hot'n'sweaty and do the nasty. Conception occurs, genes are joined, and 40 weeks later, a little baby is born. Or maybe Jesus does it all. I dunno -- I'm still not married. In any case, something that happens in a lab is certainly not human life as it has evolved (oops! I let that cat out of the bag!) over the last few million years. No, Wes, what happens in a lab is called an "experiment." Science, dig it, cool.

More:

"Hoping to make vast fortunes from patented "products" derived from the destruction of embryonic life, Big Biotech is counting on being able to create an unlimited supply of human clones."

Unlimited human clones? Someone is going to make money peddling baby Hitlers to the mass market? Let's check just two facts here, Wesley, since your editor didn't see fit to do so. First, some of the most promising research going on in cloning is how do so without destroying any embryonic material. Hell, even those heartless, Stalin-cloning (or was it Hitler?) scientists have real ethical issues there. I don't, but I'm just a cruel drunk. Second, there is almost NO MARKET AT ALL for cloning whole humans. Really, I'm messed up enough -- do I really want an exact copy of me someday, should my fiance and I prove to be infertile? When a couple decide to make a baby, it's because they want BOTH OF THEM joined in a new person. It's the ultimate expression of very traditional love. Very old school, very conservative, Wes -- you should approve. So I ask -- who wants a carbon copy? And even if they did, what the hell business is it of Wesley J. Smith?

Human cloning is going to provide things like gene treatments for major diseases, replacement parts for VodkaPundit's abused liver, and healthy normal babies for Bob and Alice for whom in vitro fertilization just wasn't working. We'll live longer, and happier, and maybe, just maybe, manage to have healthier children.

I could go on and dissect the rest of the paragraphs in Wes's baby, but that seems a little like a late-term abortion.

VodkaPundit gets mad sometimes.