Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Rant: The Island
Note: The Rant has been missing from my e-mails / posts lately … in fact, I haven’t truly ranted about anything since classes started up in August. Righto, so you don’t have to read this if you don’t want to. In fact, you can delete this for all I care, or reply, or send me hate mail (although, being my friend, I hope you wouldn’t). For the one or two of you who have never received this, this is just me -- well, ranting -- expressing my own ego driven opinion and, for some reason or another, I think you may find this interesting or informative or a few minutes of entertainment allowing you to avoid doing whatever it is you should be doing at this moment in time. On with the show!

The first thing I assume y’all will have noticed is my title for this nice little fit. Now, by my calling this Rant “Rant: The Island” I’m not saying that I want to buy one and live in the Caribbean all on my own. Nope, this is a reference to the movie that came out this summer by that title. If you didn’t see the movie, or just don’t know anything about it, The Island is about people who are clones, live in a facility and are periodically taken (via a “random” lottery) away from everyone else and harvested for their organs so that the person from whom they are cloned can have whatever organ it is that they need to keep on living (or, in some cases, have a baby but never endure the miracle (or I suppose they must think it a curse) of pregnancy). Now, I’m not going to be ranting about cloning but I will be ranting about embryonic stem cell research. Just wanted y’all to not send me an e-mail going: “Irish, what the bloody hell do islands have to do with using a blastocyst to create new organs?”

Why am I doing this instead of trying to twist my head and vocabulary about the historical reasons behind the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth (that would be the paper I’ve been working on for two months … theoretically)? Because it’s what I was doing in my biology class today. Or, more to the point: what is the / how does the / should we have a social-political moral stance on the issue of embryonic stem cell research? Now, y’all, who probably don’t really care anyway and who most definitely weren’t even in the class, get to read about my opinion on the matter and how I felt about the debate itself (this is the part where you can stop reading if you really want to).

--Note: brief explanation on what embryonic stem cell research is, in case you don’t know. Left over embryos not used from invetro fertilization are frozen and sometimes used for research. What happens is the scientists allow the embryo to grow until it reaches a stage when it’s called a blastocyst, this is a cluster of ‘stem cells’ and nothing else. These stem cells can become absolutely any cell in the human body and can be, theoretically, placed in any body to become any cell / tissue / organ without fear of rejection. However, during this process the potential human being is destroyed. Thus, the controversy.--

We had two professors who hosted this question-answer session along with my normal professor (Phil). One was Dr. Lauren Knapp (male) who is also in charge of the undergraduate biology majors, and the others was Dr. Ed Mann who is a philosophy professor in ethics. Dr. Knapp did a brief explanation on what embryonic stem cell research is and Dr. Mann did a brief explanation on what social-political morals are. Now, we were supposed to ask questions concerning the social-political moral standpoint / the reason for it on the subject of embryonic stem cell research. Doesn’t sound that hard to do, does it? Apparently, for some, it is. Some people found it necessary to a) voice their opinions and ask why the federal government see it as what should be done, to b) re-state the original question twice, and to -- I kid you not -- c) ask why society should make choices for people in the first place. This was, for me, incredibly annoying.

A) I don’t give a crap what your opinion on this matter is. This wasn’t a debate about whether or not we should make embryonic stem cell research legal or illegal, this was a question-answer session concerning ethical implications that we’re going through to decide whether we should make it illegal. Or, to put in other way: “Reasons why society as a whole should claim in a way that the majority of society would agree upon that we should not perform embryonic stem cell research.” It wasn’t a forum for the individual political, social, religious, ethical, philosophical, etc. reasons why we should / shouldn’t legalize the research. Crikey!

B) I wanted to strangle the chick who committed this atrocity. After taking about three minutes expressing her own opinion in the matter as a preamble (I’d want my sick relative to receive an organ from embryonic research … and I don‘t think the blastocyst has a soul / I don‘t think it‘s a human being yet so it’s okay) so proceeded to ask: “In fact, in light of this (her opinion) why anyone would not (and, yes, she did stress it) be willing to sacrifice one in place of many who could live if they had a new organ?” Which is, of course, what the social-political moral question is about for this issue. Dr. Mann and Dr. Knapp pretty much answered thus: “Well, one, that’s the question we’re addressing in this question-answer session. Two, in the medical-philosophical world this an idea known as ‘natural process’ … it is the natural process of a person with heart disease to die of heart disease. It is the natural process of an embryo to develop into a human being. By doing embryonic research and destroying a human being to make an organ we are thwarting the natural process. This is where we run into the problem with the whole ‘do none harm’ clause, is it better to destroy a potential human being to save a life that should be ending? (Again, the whole controversy in the first place)” After Dr. Mann got finished saying all this, she repeated her question. Yes, she changed the wording very slightly, but it was still the same bloody question and she got the same bloody response.

C) The woman wanted to know why society should have a voice in something like embryonic stem cell research. As close as I can get to the original question is pretty much: “What right does society have to impose ideas upon the individual?” I got incredibly irked at this. To the point where I actually burst out -- albeit quietly so only about four people sitting next to me actually heard -- “Hey, let’s all have anarchy!” Because, of course, what else is government but society coming to and enforcing an consensus on individuals (leastways, in a democratic republic, of course the picture isn’t quite so pretty if the form of government is, say, controlled by a cruel despot)? She immediately followed this up with, “Do I tell you what you need to do?” Which, rightfully I thought, the good professors responded: “Yes, and yes you do. What do you think taxes and voting are? In fact, it’s not so much a right that society has inasmuch as it is a responsibility. When a group of people form a society / government, especially one as complex as the United States, it’s an imperative in order to have the society function to best preserve the individuals of the society.” Sooth, I suppose that she actually had a place to ask the question, but I found (and still find) it to be a very stupid one and one that shouldn’t have even come up. If you question the society’s right to impose laws you aren’t questioning the morals of one particular issue, you are questioning the very nature of what a government is. Take it to another forum.

Now for the part you’ve all waited for: my own opinion … in a roundabout fashion. The basic question for embryonic stem cell research is the core question that also concerns invetro fertilization and abortion, indeed, it is the question that ties all three together. I’m against abortion. I don’t think anyone should do it, I definitely never intend to have an abortion myself. I think that human life begins the moment the sperm fertilizes the egg. As for invetro fertilization: it’s not something that I’ve given a lot of thought to, but the more I think about it the more I’m against it. If you want to have a baby and can’t have one yourself: adopt. So, where do I stand on embryonic stem cell research?

First, the idea scares me. It makes me uneasy. It makes me think that Frankenstein has suddenly left the world of fiction and become fact. Adult stem cell research and umbilical stem cell research (stem cells taken from the umbilical cord) don’t disturb me as much. For one thing, there’s no destruction of a human life and there’s no possibility of creating another human life via form other than normal pregnancy. Embryonic stem cell research creeps me out the same way the idea of cloning to harvest organs (hence, The Island title) does. It would be another long e-mail entirely to go into the reasons behind this, I will go into it for whoever wants to, but for now just accept the fact that it gives me goose bumps.

Second, I don’t agree with the destruction of human life. All the proper DNA is in the blastocyst for a potential human being to exist. At this stage, the embryonic stem cell research involves destroying a potential human being.

Third, I believe it’s essential for scientists to go as far as they’re ethically able to find help for the world and to understand it.

Fourth, I don’t believe in wasting resources.

Therefore: I believe we should allow scientists to continue to do embryonic stem cell research as long as it is not funded by the federal government and new embryos are not formed. “Irish,” y’all are thinking, “where in the world did that come from?” Well, it’s very simple. As of right now, invetro fertilization is legal. That means there is, as of 2004, 400,000 (yeah, thousand) embryos frozen. They are alive and have the potential to grow into human beings … however it’s most likely that they’ll exist as frozen embryos until they naturally disintegrate (they can’t stay frozen and alive forever). So, either we let them all die or we perform research that could potentially help cure diseases such as Alzheimer’s or help to re-grow a heart for a patient suffering from heart disease. If the human being is going to be destroyed / die before it even has a chance to form I believe the lesser of two evils should be chosen: use it to help others. Now, I don’t believe in harvesting / creating embryos solely for the purpose of embryonic stem cell research, nor do I believe it should be funded by the federal government. The first part I think is obvious and as for the pecuniary part of the argument: for all of us individuals who don’t agree with it, we shouldn’t have to put our tax dollars towards it. It should be privately funded or else be an optional payment (like the little box to whether you want to donate $3 for whatever presidential candidate when you get your driver’s license and fill out your taxes). Also, the federal government then remains neutral in such a religiously and morally charged issue.

‘Til next time …

I love you Batman @}--',--
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