ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the idea of the harm principle as a regulative standard for pluralistic communities, using cloning as the test case. As an internal regulative standard, this principle would limit the legitimate outcomes of democratic decision making: only if a local regulatory position on cloning were compatible with the harm principle would it pass muster. If there is a regulatory consensus about anything in bioethics and biolaw, it is that human reproductive cloning is unethical and that it should be prohibited. Macro Cloning Turning from micro cloning to macro cloning, a utilitarian would want to be assured that the loss of genetic diversity implicated in such a project would not unintentionally render humans less resistant to disease. Applying the harm principle, so understood, to reproductive human cloning, utilitarians will support prohibition so long as the procedure is unsafe and, thus, capable of generating various types of disutility.
