READER RICHARD ROARK isn’t persuaded by James Taranto’s anti-cloning post today:

Maybe being raised on a literary diet of R. A. Heinlein results in different thought patterns, BUT I thought incest was taboo because of the heightened possibility of birthing defectives and Royal Families.

Also, the ranting that a clone would be a carbon copy discredits human intelligence, freewill and everything we’ve been led to believe about environmental influences on human development. Genetic copies would be unlikely to develop in exactly the same way. Or do we now believe in genetic predetermination? If so, maybe the eugenics crowd were right and society could use some pruning by not letting genes for (name your favorite pet peeve) be passed along. Oh ! I forgot we shouldn’t do the research to identify those genes.

To counter the meeting of a man with his younger cloned wife may I suggest that James Taranto contact his local PBS station and get them to replay “The Cloning
of Joanna May”.