ANY SCIENTIST WHO wanted to start a human cloning project in the United States would have a paradoxical legal problem. Cloning a human being is not against the law, but a great deal more research has to be done before scientists will know how to clone a person and whether doing so is safe. That research, however, is against the law. So American scientists who want to investigate the possibilities of human cloning are stopped before they begin.

Lawmakers all over the world are struggling with the questions that human cloning raises. Because the technology is so new, and because opinions about it are so deeply divided, developing laws to govern it is very difficult. One professor of bioethics, Glenn McGee, says bluntly, "We are in a regulatory nightmare."

The current laws

As soon as the cloning of Dolly the sheep was...