Sir

In your News story “Researchers divided over ethics of a ban on cloning” (Nature 423, 373; 2003), about the German government's proposed ban on all types of human cloning, you report that some bioethicists regard the main argument against human cloning to be the risk of spontaneous abortion or ill-health in the offspring. Hence they argue that, if these risks were overcome, other arguments against human cloning would not withstand ethical analysis.

However, I suspect that most people do not delegate their moral or ethical judgements to professional ethicists, but make judgements themselves on the basis of their personal philosophy (which may or may not have a religious underpinning) or of the 'gut feeling' that results from this.

I personally am completely opposed to human cloning of any sort, from a feeling of utter repugnance towards what appears to me to be a fundamental assault on human dignity, with the potential for horrendous misuse.

If this is a minority opinion among biological scientists, I suspect that it has a wider resonance among the general public, especially in countries with memories of the infamies perpetrated in the name of science and medicine.

I, like many scientists, am an atheist, but I do not think that anyone has a licence to play God.