I've had a busy day at work today (and this week), so I don't have time for my one of my usual thorough, extensive, loquacious looks into the issues of the day (Annie continues to astound me with her continuous multi-tasking and ability to actually accomplish tasks and still post 1,000 times in a day). Many interesting and exciting news bulletins crossed my desk today (or, really, crossed my computer screen) and I'm going to link to them and let you think good and hard about them.
As I walked into the office this morning, I froze in front of this headline. As you may or may not know, Prettyboy does stem cell research and is constantly attempting to explain how difficult it is to seed adult stem cells so that they become heart cells and can be used to rebuilt heart walls (a process that several labs are working on internationally, but no one has successfully accomplished; my money, of course, is on Prettyboy). I'm thrilled that we've found a possible alternative to stem cells in order to circumvent the controversy surrounding their use in scientific inquiry; but I'm still nauseated that there's a controversy in the first place.
Initially, religion and government were separated not to keep government pure from the influence of religion, but to keep religions free from the intrusion of government. Today, we face the opposite problem. Surely, our values should guide our governance, but when private religious belief overshadows science and when the government begins to dictate religious morals, there's a real and true problem with the separation of Church and State that I would think religious groups would have as large a problem with as secularists. Surely, the morals held by the Christian right are not the morals held by all religious people? And surely the tyranny of one version of religion over all is a tyranny as bad as a government absent morals entirely. The role of government should be to ensure the rights of the citizenry, not to dictate morals.
Alright, rant over (for now).
In other news, and something on which I will comment further tomorrow after I think more deeply about it: Our Ownership Society. Read it; reflect; tomorrow: we'll discuss.
Also, watch this slideshow. Thank me tomorrow.
XOXO,
Harley
2 comments:
I'm thrilled that we've found a possible alternative to stem cells in order to circumvent the controversy surrounding their use in scientific inquiry
AMEN!
Surely, our values should guide our governance, but when private religious belief overshadows science and when the government begins to dictate religious morals, there's a real and true problem with the separation of Church and State that I would think religious groups would have as large a problem with as secularists.
That doesn't really make sense. Should science be permitted to do anything it feels can have a possible gain no matter the morals it steamrolls in the process? As it is, we make certain sacrifices for science, but there needs to be some kind of guard, and I think it makes sense for an elected government which represents the people to determine that to some extent. I DO agree that the morals of Christians are not the morals of the people, but it's not as if only Christians (or all Christians, on the reverse side) were unhappy with this.
I think that in cases where it's such a serious moral issue, all other routes should be tried to the best of their ability before debate begins on the morally questionable route, assuming that there's not *too* significant of a time lapse/loss in the process. In this case, since the compromise by Bush which did allow use of the ones that were already done, it doesn't seem like there was much of a lapse on the human stem cells but it did knock research money to looking at other, less morally questionable methods - and added bonus, it worked. If this really works out, not only will it be acceptable to all, but it stands to reason that it will be far less costly as well.
It is not a serious moral issue. Stem cells do not have consciousness or souls. Torturing ants is immoral. Splicing stem cells (or whatever the hell Prettyboy does) is not immoral even a little bit. The religious position on stem cell research is borne out of ignorance (big surprise).
THE ROOSTER
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