LAST Week In God

"He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife."
Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

For more on religion and politics, Hugh Bris has posted an interesting discussion on the Mahdi Army here. While I would love to engage on the specific topic he writes about ,I lack a fundamental understanding of the situation (alright, and am only 1/4 of the way through the wikipedia link he provided). So there. BUT reading his did inspire me to post this which was started last week but I couldn't quite wrap my mind around what I was trying to say. At a certain point JUST HIT PUBLISH already.

Is an ethical workaround inherently unethical?

A new way to create stem cells 'Pretty big technical leap' avoids destroying embryos
(from SF Chronicle online)
Scientists offered a new recipe Wednesday for producing stem cells without destroying human embryos, reshaping ethical arguments that have threatened to stymie experiments in regenerative medicine.

A report in the journal Nature describes the creation of two novel stem cell lines, each made from an early-stage embryo consisting of 8 to 10 cells. Only a single cell needs to be plucked from the embryo to make a stem cell colony, scientists said, leaving the rest of the embryo to develop normally.

"It's a pretty big technical leap, so that's important," said Christopher Scott, a bioethics expert and executive director of a Stanford University program on stem cells in society. "This is one more tool, one more technique, that helps us understand the rich biology behind cell differentiation."

Still others said they doubt it would solve their ethical objections, arguing that the technique is an offshoot of a procedure they consider morally dubious and potentially dangerous for embryos.

The new method, by researchers for Advanced Cell Technology Inc. in Worcester, Mass., is designed to piggyback on a procedure known as "pre-implantation genetic diagnosis," or PGD, done during in vitro fertilization when patients are concerned about passing on a genetic disease. In those cases, doctors do what amounts to a single-cell biopsy on the tiny embryo and perform genetic tests on that cell to be sure that the embryo chosen for transfer into the womb is free of the particular disease markers.....

Using a method to make stem cells without destroying the embryo "probably (emphasis added by me) makes it a little less objectionable, but you've already got a morally questionable act that begins this process," said Dr. David Stevens, executive director of the anti-abortion Christian Medical Association, based in Bristol, Tenn.

Some experiments involving the destruction of embryos have to be done merely to perfect the nondestructive methods -- another ethics roadblock. In the latest experiments, for instance, scientists used 16 frozen embryos, donated from in vitro fertilization clinics, and had to pluck a total of 91 cells to get the two stem cell lines.
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There was a similar article in Reuters (which I unfortunately can't find now) where a religious publication mentioned in the article says Baptists for Life still won't support the research. The quotable words they used is "presumably from a process that destroyed embryos." Now that embryos may not even need to be destroyed, might it be okay to conduct research that could cure AIDS and save millions of lives? Resounding answer is still "NO." They probably should've reserved judgment at least until the technological and scientific advances caught up to the moral dilemma. A lot of these religious organizations have made the blanket declaration for the party line already as "stemcell research = bad thus must oppose at all costs" -- but how about now, in light of new research and new possibilities? Still probably and presumably NO.

It's amazing to me that some people really truly have a "moral" problem with stem-cell research on the basis of 'probably' and 'presumably'. Will they eventually come to be viewed as people on the fringe of society, as some other religious groups (none specific come to mind) who refuse modern medicinal treatments, in the name of religion? I don't personally understand it but if a grown competent person doesn't want to take antibiotics for a staph infection or chemotherapy for cancer because he or she believes that God said not to, I really don't have a problem with that. Live and let live, that's what I say.

However, if your "beliefs" infringe upon MY rights .... then we have a problem. A really big problem. Because when people try to impose their "moral" beliefs on others who don't agree, this is when things turn ugly. This is where zealots find the justification for [insert crime here] "in the name of [insert deity here]". MY belief is that I have a right to use medicine. I don't know about your relationship with your God, but MY God wants me to be as healthy as I can be, because otherwise I am a total bee-otch when I don't feel well and that just isn't "godly"under anyone's definition. :) I think I have a right to take advantage of technology and that means research, in all of its good and evil forms.

In light of this new discovery (and the discoveries I believe have yet to be made) these groups support an arcane viewpoint that a mass of cells can only constitute life and any alteration to life is immoral. I am not so narrow in my view of the world or of man's capabilities to improve (or destroy) it. I am hopeful that technology will not be the moral downfall of humankind (literal downfall maybe: we very well might all be crushed to death under mountains of dead cell phones that only work for one year-DIE-VERIZON-DIE! oops forgot, inside voice hehe) and that yes possibly more leukemia patients will be saved by treatment than saved by prayers alone.

My beef is that these groups (and I don't target just religious ones, but we'll just use them as the example here) who hold themselves out as spiritual leaders will "declare a policy" or declare which side of a political issue is THE ONE AND ONLY "morally correct" side. I assume these declarations are not made soley for the purpose of stroking the group leaders' collective egos, but for the purpose of giving the group direction on how to act, how to vote, how to THINK!

This is why these groups have no business in politics! (For instant anguish over separation of church and state-and to skip the rest of this rant only slightly disguised as a discussion-jump to the Rep. Harris article below). I don't feel that we as humans can KNOW what the morally correct thing to do is 100% of the time. But most of us (religious or not) make an admirable attempt at being decent productive members of society without hardly even trying.

With that said, when groups or leaders start painting political issues in the light of "moral" and "immoral", that really angers me because the message to its members is "Hey, if you even think about thinking otherwise, you're already sinning! Gotcha!" or "Hey, if you had it in your mind that thinking or feeling on your own is a Godly thing, you're wrong!"

I don't trust a human to tell me what is right and wrong in my daily life. Why am I going to trust a human to tell me what is moral and immoral when it comes to, say an issue like stem cell research? Who is to say that through emerging research, we will one day be able to cure every disease without destroyong embryos? What if we could do it without harvesting cells but CREATE them in the lab? How can we ever get there if we shut our minds to the very possibility because we allow a few narrow-minded and agenda-driven individuals to speak for us? If you don't like technology and research, that's fine. But don't stand in my way or in the way of progress. You are not God, you don't know.

And while we're on the topic of people who hold themselves out as "leaders" ...

Rep. Harris: Church-state separation 'a lie'
MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris told a religious journal that separation of church and state is "a lie" and God and the nation's founding fathers did not intend the country be "a nation of secular laws."

The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate also said that if Christians are not elected, politicians will "legislate sin," including abortion and gay marriage.

Harris made the comments -- which she clarified Saturday -- in the Florida Baptist Witness, the weekly journal of the Florida Baptist State Convention, which interviewed political candidates and asked them about religion and their positions on issues.

Separation of church and state is "a lie we have been told," Harris said in the interview, published Thursday, saying separating religion and politics is "wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers."

"If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin," Harris said.

This is a woman, an elected official already in the House of Representatives, running for US Senate this year. Real people voted for her. And kept voting for her! But now she wants more!

Incidentally "Harris, 49, faced widespread criticism for her role overseeing the 2000 presidential recount as Florida's secretary of state."

(gasp!) I thought I recognized her from somewhere.