James Q. Wilson

About the author: James Q. Wilson is emeritus professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and author of Crime and Human Nature, Moral Judgment, and other books.

Cloning can be viewed as simply another form of assisted reproduction like artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization. The important point to consider in protecting the child's welfare is not how the child was created, but the family in which he or she is raised. Therefore, cloning should be limited to intact heterosexual families and restrictions should be placed on the sources of human eggs. With such restrictions in place, cloning is unlikely to become very common.

Like most people, I instinctively recoil from the idea of cloning human beings. But we ought to pause and identify what in the...