have been protected because of the great social import the United States places on the “sanctity of knowledge and the value of intellectual freedom.”371 In fact, Senator Tom Harkin has defended cloning research by explicitly stating that scientists have the right to research and that there are not “any appropriate limits to human knowledge. None, whatsoever. . . . To my friends Senator Bond and President Clinton who are saying ‘Stop, we can’t play God,’I say ‘Fine. Take your ranks alongside Pope Paul V who in 1616 tried to stop Galileo.’”372 Senator Harkin argues that any government ban or limitation on human cloning research is essentially an “attempt to limit human knowledge [which is] demeaning to human nature.”373 Harkin also stated that human cloning “is right and proper . . . [because] it holds untold benefits for humankind in the future.”374 Although there is no specifically enumerated right to research in the U.S. Constitution, certain commentators argue that support for such a right could be derived from the Fourteenth Amendment right to personal liberty375 and the First Amendment right to free speech.376 This right to research consists of the freedom to pursue knowledge.377 The strongest claims have been made for a First Amendment right of scientific inquiry. The U.S. Supreme Court in Branzburg v. Hayes specifically analogized the information function performed by academic researchers to that performed by the press.378 If the First Amendment protects a marketplace of ideas, it seems likely that it would protect the generation of information that will be included in the marketplace. The U.S. Supreme Court has protected the precursors to speech in a variety of settings,379 such as extending First Amendment protection to the financing of speech380 and the gathering of news381 as necessary precursors to speech itself. There is extensive discussion in dicta of a right of inquiry. The Supreme Court stated in Meyer v. Nebraska382 that the right to liberty guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment encompassed freedom to “acquire useful knowledge . . . and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”383 A federal district court similarly suggested that scholars have a “right . . . to do research and advance the state of man’s knowledge.”384 But what does that “right” consist of? It is clear that the right of scientific inquiry protects access to existing information. For example, that federal court opined in dicta that obscenity laws could not be applied to prohibit the Kinsey Institute from studying obscene materials.385 However, other court cases specifically reject the idea that a fundamental right of scientific inquiry exists.386 These cases are relevant because they held that there is no fundamental right of medical researchers to conduct medical research on fetuses. Even if scientific inquiry were found to be protected by the Constitution, certain restrictions would be permissible. Regulation would not be permissible if it were solely undertaken to restrict the generation of new knowledge. However, the government could regulate to protect against compelling harms (such as the psychological, physical, and social risks of cloning of whole individuals), so long as the regulation is no more restrictive on speech than is necessary to further that interest.
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