Chimeras - it has begun

  • Thread starter Thread starter nan
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
nan said:
msnbc.msn.com/id/6534243 :eek: Please tell me there are others out there as appalled as I am after reading this article.
Click to expand...

Yeah its disgusting. Your seeing the results of the hidden agendas of the liberals for stem cell research. There is no boundaries of morality for them.
 
Wow!

Yeah, we all knew it was just a matter of time before this topic came up again in the world news.

“What would be so dreadful?” asked Ann McLaren, a renowned developmental biologist at the University of Cambridge in England. After all, she said, no human embryo could develop successfully in a mouse womb. It would simply die, she told the academy. No harm done.

We see a major problem there, don’t we?

So, you’ve got teaching about blood transfusions, organ donations, and all that. How will the Church’s teaching develop or be interpreted to address the issue of having non-human sources for human organs and maybe even blood?
 
Ok, I read the first few paragraphs, and I couldn’t finish it. It is sick. these people need to get a life. Has anyone heard of the bible? It says in it (I would have to look it up again) to not mix humans with animals. Wow. These scientists need to find somethin worthwhile to use their time on.
 
“I don’t see why anyone would raise objections to our work,” Zanjani said in an interview."

Maybe because you’re not God. How about “the end doesn’t justify the means?” Ok, here’s one – because this is totally sick! I’m even going to thow this one out there – those poor animals – part animal, part human, how sad.

Objections, anyone?
 
It’s numbing to even begin to think of where this goes.

Sorry, I need to move on, it’s that distressing. I think that’s probably how some of these things get through. Those who know better are too appalled, those who don’t know better, well they don’t know better.

And I have a degree in BioChem, with a research background. Thank God I’m a devout Catholic to save me from being involved in such things.

CARose
 
I wouldnt be able to sleep at night if I were one of those scientists.
 
When I read the article, I cringed and felt totally disgusted. It was almost like my heart stood still. I reflected on how mind shocking abortion is, and now this. I feel like crying.
 
40.png
SocaliCatholic:
Yeah its disgusting. Your seeing the results of the hidden agendas of the liberals for stem cell research. There is no boundaries of morality for them.
Click to expand...

That depends what one means by “liberal”.​

This article makes some very necessary distinctions:

The word liberal is derived from the Latin liber, free, and up to the end of the eighteenth century signified only “worthy of a free man”, so that people spoke of “liberal arts”, “liberal occupations”. Later the term was applied also to those qualities of intellect and of character, which were considered an ornament becoming those who occupied a higher social position on account of their wealth and education. Thus liberal got the meaning of intellectually independent, broad-minded, magnanimous, frank, open, and genial. Again Liberalism may also mean a political system or tendency opposed to centralization and absolutism. In this sense Liberalism is not at variance with the spirit and teaching of the Catholic Church. **Since the end of the eighteenth century, however, the word has been applied more and more to certain tendencies in the intellectual, religious, political, and economical life, which implied a partial or total emancipation of man from the supernatural, moral, and Divine order… **

Is the “liberalism” everyone loves to hate, the sort which has been underlined - or the sort which is in bold print ?

Or do people not distinguish between them ? ##
 
nan said:
msnbc.msn.com/id/6534243 :eek: Please tell me there are others out there as appalled as I am after reading this article.
Click to expand...

I’m not. This is not really new.​

From the article:

"Such “humanized” animals could have countless uses. They would almost certainly provide better ways to test a new drug’s efficacy and toxicity, for example, than the ordinary mice typically used today.

Already, he said, they have learned things they “never would have learned had there been a bioethical ban.”

Now he wants to add human brain stem cells that have the defects that cause Parkinson’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease and other brain ailments — and study how those cells make connections.

Now Weissman says he is thinking about making chimeric mice whose brains are 100 percent human. He proposes keeping tabs on the mice as they develop. If the brains look as if they are taking on a distinctly human architecture — a development that could hint at a glimmer of humanness — they could be killed, he said. If they look as if they are organizing themselves in a mouse brain architecture, they could be used for research.

So far this is just a “thought experiment,” Weissman said, but he asked the university’s ethics group for an opinion anyway.

“Everyone said the mice would be useful,” he said. “But no one was sure if it should be done.”"

This is very impressive - but, it’s based on shoddy foundations.

Life is a good in itself. So are living creatures. So they should be valued for their own sake. But to measure life by its “usefulness”, is very dangerous. The old are not useful; if anything, they are using valuable resources. So why not get rid of them ? That is what one ends up with, if one looks on human beings, not as having an irreducible dignity independent of what use or profit they may be in practical terms, but as mere social instruments: as means, instead of as ends. People become disposable - so they get thrown out in the trash, to be found in dumpsters. A view of man which regards the old and the young as of the same inherent value as disposable trash, will eventually turn against those neither very young nor very incapacitated by age. It will turn on the terminally sick, and eventually, on those who are healthy - for no man is an island; on all of us. Ultimately, no one is safe from being treated as trash, by people with a view of human life like that.

This is the sort of medical science to be expected from a society which fears death. Personally, I would rather die as a human being, than be kept alive by being a cyborg - that is another way of being human which has been invented - or a man-animal hybrid. Part of the trouble is, that the human ability to invent machines, is being abused, when the “parts” of human or other life are combined in these unnatural ways. It is unnatural - that is the appropriate word - to do such things, because there is no organic continuity between being a man and being a machine; or, being an ear, and being the mouse onto the back of which the ear is grafted - unless the ear was prosthetic. This type of combination, is that of the freak-show, only worse.

It is essential to understand the assumptions on which this “instrumental” view of man rests. Otherwise it cannot be answered convincingly. It is a profoundly anti-human and dehumanising vision.

[continue…]
 
…continued, ended]

One of the ironies, is that we live in a world where some trash is very slow to decay; unlike the corpse of an infant. Our humans can be thrown away, but our waste has a life of thousands of years. Now that, is topsy-turvy.

It is the inversion of the Christian vision, in which the world passes away, and the human person, supernaturalised, possesses the eternal Life of God. As God is the One in Whom all joy and life and light and blessedness is found, it is no wonder that a world which sees this vision inside out is so wretched, joyless, despairing, miserable, death-obsessed & dark of heart. A world that loses the vision of God, is certain to lose the vision of man. So all that it sets out to do by this unnatural science, will end in complete futility, but not before a world of harm has been done.
It reminds me very strongly of Romans 1. ##
 
As I was thinking about this some today with my friend at work who is in desparate need of a liver transplant (not from alcohol use or anything “usual” like that) I was considering a couple points:
  1. Unbridled, unrestrained, experiments and goals in this “chimeric” pursuit are unarguably dangerous, threatening to the created order, and unethical. But does that mean that there is no use at all for the advances we’ve made in genetic sciences since those 2 partener scientists (I can’t remember their names, but somebody does) decades ago developed what we take and use as the double helix DNA model? Like, it began, so how should it continue on in the next 50 years?
  2. The Catholic Church seems to always find it’s stance on things that others are either somewhat for or against and being staunch on them, (such as birth control, abortion and euthenasia). However, where others are staunchly for or against, the Catholic Church sometimes defines the acceptable limits, methods and reasons for some things. The Church allows what others would wrongly be called euthenasia and birth control, and has what seems to be a good stance on organ transplants, where some are totally against it.
So, again, I say it will be interesting to see how the Magesterium will address these issues. The Church is staunchly not against science, rather for it. You’ve even got a superduper astronomical observatory (Vatican observatory). And even with differing views of Church and State, you can bet that the Magesterium’s stance on it will be heard (neglected maybe) but at least heard.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top