"...There is something very wrong with attempting to make a copy of one's self..."
This is simply your opinion, not an objective truth.
That being said, the chief motivation for producing a clone of oneself WOULD seem to be an exercise in hubris, which -if not 'wrong' per se- is at least tacky.
"...The danger is that the cloned would try to impose her personality on the clone..."
While possibly, maybe even probably true, this is no different a burden that that endured by virtually every son of a successful man since the dawn of time.
"...Aside from the repugnant genetic manipulation this allows, I think it wise to understand that the last time this debate surfaced, about 2 years ago, a huge number of people seemed to think this was a swell idea, since they would have SPARE PARTS!..."
'Spare Parts' will happen. And the technology to produce individual, genetic match organs will far outstrip what cloning could bring to the table.
Within a generation, those who produce such repair parts will shake their heads and chuckle at the notion that anyone would have ever considered the possibility of producing a clone to supply a liver, or a heart.
If your Buick's left headlight shoots craps do you buy an identical Buick just to 'cut out' its left headlight?
Of course not.
And neither will the organ builders.
"...I can foresee an industry of clone centers where the clones are kept in case they are "needed."..."
Why spend billions of dollars using a wasteful method, AND swim against the tide of history and morality, when you can spend a few hundred thousand to achieve the result elegantly, and be praised as a servant of mankind?
No one will ever do what you fear, on a widespread commercial basis. Simple economics will prevent it from being a acceptable option.
Honestly, you paint an image of a world where every identical twin should be wary of their sibling, lest they be targeted for 'organ harvesting' by their evil twin.
"...The cult that supposedly has produced this child speaks of transferring one's memory and personality to the clone, in an effort to attain immortality..."
Yes... If the technology to copy, or move, personalities from one brain (cloned or otherwise) to another is ever developed a can of worms will be opened by it.
But that isn't what we're talking about.
Cloning is nothing more, and nothing less, than the simple encore of a genome. Embryos that divide to form identical twins do it in the womb all the time. It's not the Xeroxing of a mind, or the duplication of a soul.
There may come a time when the red-meat argument is whether or not to simply transcend our biological bodies, not whether to utilize a clumsy, ancient 'lifeboat' paradigm, maintaining existence through an endless chain of fragile organic bodies, any one of which can be destroyed unexpectedly.
For those ambitious enough to pursue physical immortality, or something close to it, cloning is ultimately a dead end.
"...All in all, human cloning should be banned..."
Before we pursue the unachievable chimera of banning this means for the creation of new lives we should first ban the wanton destruction of lives through the form of murder called abortion.
History is a steamroller for those who hold up their hands and demand it to stop.
Recently on ABC TV morning news some guys were talking about the implications of cloning. The talking head asked the scientist type what would be the worst-case scenario. The scientist type said that it would be if some narcissistic individual had copies made of himself and exercised control over them.
Whoopie, like that doesn't happen already! It's called parenthood, the only difference being that instead of the offspring having half of his genome from each of two parents he has all of it from one.
But cloning already happens spontaneously. In the case of identical twins, one literally is the clone of the other. Sometime after fertilization and usually before implantation, the developing human individual casts off a varying number of cells which, after further growth and implantation in the uterus, continue developing into another individual (or individuals) which is more or less genetically identical to its forebear. One of the twins did not develop directly as the result of a sperm/egg combination but at a later stage from the original individual. So much for those talking about soul-less automatons of human flesh stalking around as a consequence of cloning. In one case it already happens by chance in utero as opposed to under controlled conditions by design.
Anyway, the scientist type, in his pontification, seemed to believe that if one person comes from another then it is owned by the progenitor which somehow has a right to oppress it. Even parents don't have the right to do that, at least after birth, and people don't have a right to own slaves no matter where they come from.
Some have spoken as though the very purposefulness of a deliberately made human clone would somehow, in and of itself, confer upon the maker powers over it which he otherwise would not have had if the cloning had occurred ‘naturally’ or ‘accidentally’. Hmmmm, and the individual conceived accidentally as a result of multiple failed contraceptive devices is to be accorded higher status than the one whose nearly-infertile parents tried for years and spent much money in order to be able to conceive him? The accident is afforded the full panoply of human rights but the planned-for and chosen is available for body parts? As absurd as this sounds for an individual ‘naturally’ born having two parents, the situation is no different for an individual who is cloned. He still has two genetic forebears, just through the intermediary of another individual, as in the case of identical twins. The manner of his coming into existence still takes back seat to the fact of his existence. It lies in the fact of his existence, like that of anyone else, not in the manner in which he came into existence, that he is endowed with inalienable rights.
Questions such as "Just what does this mean about being human?" are irrelevant at this point since this is all still a matter of doing by technology what is already done in nature. People can start asking these questions when someone does something really spectacular like whipping up an entire individual human genome from scratch, placing it in an artificially made cell, complete with artificially-made cellular components, and then generating a person from it, growing it in an artificial womb. Of course, it would still a matter of nature, human beings, accomplishing the same end, reproduction, by different means, a form of asexual in vitro budding.