It's interesting that after about an hour of reading about stem-cell research, I found myself learning more about human consciousness than I did about the stem cells themselves. I mean, sure, I can list the facts: stem cells are very versatile cells that can shape shift into any kind of cell one needs them to be - they can be found in bone marrow (and, to a lesser extent, in other parts of the adult body), but it's also capable to derive stem cells from blastocysts, or undifferentiated embryos. The embryos are little clusters of cells that have not yet decided their fate - tiny little clusters full of infinite possibility.
And I think that's the problem. All this possibility, and nobody can decide how best it should be used. It's impossible to universally determine when life becomes life - some would say it's the moment of conception, and some would say that the potential within the undifferentiated embryonic cells is just as useful rebuilding someone's lungs, liver, heart.
I read somewhere that life befits life befits life. It's the idea that life creates and sustains life. The stem cells in embryos might create a human being, but they might also heal those human beings that we already have. Life will always work to sustain life.
And all of these websites asked me, the reader, to take God into my heart - to reject the idea of giving away unborn children in the name of science. And I can't help but ask myself - these people call themselves pro-life. Shouldn't they be in the business not just of creating, but sustaining what they've worked so hard to protect?
You have a very good point. Medical science is truly about sustaining life--not about creating. We can take care of that on our own. But once we put another human being on this planet, we have to take responsibility for sustaining them. It should not be a priority to create, but instead to maintain.
ReplyDeleteI really like this idea--you should investigate further into the true purpose behind other sciences too.
I completely agree that it is ludicrous to protect the creation of a new life, when we are already desperately overpopulated, especially when an individual could benefit from it and continue their already valuable life in process. In fact one could make the argument that the pro lifers are actually endangering the human race as they are trying to get every unborn fetus protected and thus worsening our most species threatening problem
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