Hats off to the American Medical Association for supporting the use of cloning in medical research. Today's AMA report endorses both the scientific and the ethical value of cloning, and it's right.

Science needs to be free from government regulations, such as those supported by President Bush and the House of Representatives, if we are to continue learning about our universe and ourselves. Ask Galileo.

But more importantly, cloning research is certainly ethical, if the concept of ethics means anything.

As novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand noted, the primary concern of ethics is gaining the values needed to sustain and enhance human life. Embryonic stem cells have the potential to grow human tissue, including human organs, which could save and improve countless lives. But how would we know if this potential is realizable unless scientists are given the chance to find out?

The so-called pro-life religious conservatives who denounce and seek to prohibit cloning would close us off from knowledge and condemn the diseased and injured to continued suffering or death. It's the AMA and cloning researchers who are actually doing something for human life.

Andrew Lewis