One thing we could do is clone top scientists in the hopes that genetics played some part in their accomplishments (which I think is quite likely), which would in turn benefit everyone by accelerating discovery. Additionally, real experiments could be done to determine how much genetics determine a person's future and how much of it is from environmental factors (and therefore influence policy for everyone's benefit). This doesn't need to be done unethically; for example we could create 100 clones and raise 50 in a city and 50 in a town and observe the differences years later. Right now all we have is identical twins separated at birth for these things, and 2 is a small sample size (using various pairs of identical twins helps, but introduces more variables from variations present among twin pairs). Plus, we don't outlaw things because there's no reason for it, we outlaw things because they're harmful. There's no reason to hop around on one foot around my apartment building, but we're not outlawing that. Or forever stagnate discovery, which seems more likely. Certain problems take a different way of looking at things than other problems. By your reasoning, cloned scientists would behave as the original, and you'd always be applying the same old reasoning to every problem. Newton and Einstein are notable in history because they *didn't* follow the norm, and great things happened. The same reasoning applies to immortality (which I am very much against): it would stagnate discovery. There *are* harmful outcomes, but no good reasons (cloning scientists isn't a good reason, it's a bad one).