Irrational Cloning Frenzy

Everyone wants a clone, but I don’t understand why.

For those parents who desire clones to replace their deceased children, perhaps clones will offer them condolences to a certain extent, for the replicas of their children may be reassuring. But these clones lack the personalities, memories, traits, and experiences of their deceased predecessors. Without these essentials, the clone will never be the same as the real person who existed before. If this is the case, what then is the purpose of creating a clone?

For those sterile couples who yearn for children, perhaps clones will give them the children they had always desired, especially ones who resemble them more perfectly than their own biological children ever would. But why don’t they resort to IVF instead? Why cloning? According to USA today, clones have “a good chance of being brain-damaged” and possessing “devastating birth defects.” Therefore, not only are clones no better than children conceived through IVF, but they also create more problems than solutions as potential parents may face more obstacles and difficulties in raising clones with all the negative effects that could result.

In addition, people may argue that clones are a necessity for every narcissist. But as aforementioned, without the distinct, unique personalities, memories, character traits, and personal experiences of a person, clones are nothing but empty shells. They may outwardly resemble you, but inwardly, they could be someone else’s clone for all you know. You can never be replaced by your clone. Your clone is not you.

So why do we continue the pursuit of cloning technology? Perhaps it is because we seek the unattainable, the amazing, the absurd, the ridiculous. But everything that is unattainable, amazing, absurd, and ridiculous is not always the best option for humankind.

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/educate/college/healthscience/articles/20030126.htm

Stem Cells to the Rescue

In March 2009, President Obama lifted the Bush administration’s restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research. While Obama has angered opponents of abortion with his decision, I believe that he made the correct choice in paving the way for future medical advances that will benefit people with incurable diseases in ways never imagined. Not only are embryonic stem cells capable of “developing into any type of cell or tissue in the body,” but researchers believe that these particular stem cells may also lead to “treatments and cures for ailments as varied as diabetes, Parkinson’s and heart disease”—perhaps even “catastrophic injuries, such as spinal-cord damage.”

Opponents argue that stem cell research kills embryos who have the potential to become humans. But there are so many flaws in that argument. First of all, if it is unethical to conduct embryonic stem cell research and make good use of the countless already frozen embryos that will probably never live anyway, then is it not also unethical to keep these embryos frozen without the prospect of being implanted and allowed to develop into a fetus?

I don’t view stem cell research as killing babies but as saving innumerable lives. Billions of people suffer from incurable diseases with no hope of undergoing successful treatment anytime soon, but stem cell research offers them hope. Instead of investing in frozen embryos without definite identities, imagine the lives that we could save from stem cell research! These are the lives of people currently alive in the world—people who are breathing, feeling, experiencing, suffering. To me, they are of greater importance than nameless embryos that don’t breathe, feel, experience, or suffer.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/us/politics/10stem.html

A History of Perfection

The desire for a perfect community, and the debate over what kind of community that would be, is one nearly as old as human civilization itself. In The Republic, Plato describes what he believes to be the ideal state. He envisions a state of total equality among its citizens in terms of gender, class, and hierarchy. Universal education would be established. The community would be governed by a benevolent philosopher-king, who has been trained from childhood to lead. While this seems idealistic and idyllic, some of the measures Plato suggests in The Republic for bringing about this society seem wrong, in the context of modern ethics. A guardian class would be established to maintain the state, and they would enforce the abolishing of private property and individual wealth. With this would come the dismantling of the family; because of the total equality of the society, parents would not raise their own children, and children would not know who their parents are. Instead, they would be raised by the community as a whole. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of this is a selective breeding program, where individuals are paired by the guardian class to produce ideal offspring. Essentially, this is eugenics. Though we may balk at the extreme proposals put forth by scientists and intellectuals like Peter Singer and Julian Savulescu, we must bear in mind that these are not new ideas. Rather, they are simply the newest incarnations of very old ideas.

I'm My Own Gaurdian

As I go into the hospital for my two week check-up post surgery, I find myself forgetting that I am in fact 18 and that I have to carry my own insurance card and photo identification. Obviously, I walk into the hospital without those things, in total oblivion to the fact that I am my own independent person. My parents are my parents but they can’t be my guardians forever. I am now own guardian. So when I go to sit down with the paper work woman she makes me sign a paper agreeing or disagreeing with the statement that I have a living will. I was so confused. I was like why do I need a living will, I’m only going in for minimal procedure? Of course, I reminded myself that I was 18 now and that statement of having a living will is a serious one once you become an adult. Regardless of what kind of procedure I was going through, anything is possible at any given moment. While the woman assured me that I didn’t have to be concerned about the fact that I didn’t have a living will for my procedure, I started questioning if I should have one. Now that I am an adult, Mommy and Daddy can’t decide everything for me. And since I don’t have a living will, if something were to happen in any medical procedure, everything would be left up to me parents. That’s where the problem comes in. If I left the burden of deciding what to do with me up to my parents, there could potentially be huge controversy. Yes, they would want to try make me healthy again for as long as it would take, but people will judge them saying maybe she doesn’t want to live like this. The acknowledgement of a living will is a significant document that most people go on living without until they get older. People may not want to face the fact that something bad could happen to them and they would have to resort to the document. But whether your 18 or 89, anything is possible, and I think one would rather be safe then sorry when it came to a situation that would involve a living will.

New Execution Techniques--when are they ethical?

A man named Kenneth Biros, who was put on death row after brutally murdering and dismembering a woman he met at a bar, died this morning in an Ohio prison by a new method of execution. Ever since lethal injections have been used for individuals sentenced to death, the injections have typically been three-drug cocktails. Today, however, Biros became the first person in American history to be executed by a single drug. The drug was a large dose of an anesthetic typically used by veterinarians to euthanize animals, and which was one of the drugs in the typical three-drug injection. This drug, however, has never been used on its own in executions before, and the effects of using this one drug were unknown. In addition the Ohio prison had about three problem executions before, one of which left a man in so much pain that the governor had to call the execution off. So, Biros appealed to a higher court, his lawyer asking for a postponement of the execution by a few days so that the ethicality of this new execution protocal could be discussed. The courts refused.
While this man committed a terribly heinous crime, I think people should still be treated humanely in their last few hours of life. This drug could have made his death a slightly longer process, but it apparently puts the prisoner into a sleep so deep that he stops breathing. While falling asleep seems to be a humane way to die, a longer death seems to be less humane. Is it ethical to try out a new drug as an execution technique? The articles I read do not clearly state how much research went into the decision to use this one drug. I think that if significant research shows that the drug would be more humane, then using a new drug in an execution, would be acceptable.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/07/lawyers-fight-ohio-execution
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/12/biros_becomes_first_inmate_exe.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/08/biros-execution-kenneth-b_n_384409.html

Grit

With talk about the ability to genetically alter humans to increase intelligence there is an interesting study that finds that it is not raw intelligence that causes success, but rather a term that psychologists call 'grit'. Grit is the ability to see long-term goals and pursue them with an impressive work ethic and not falter until the goal is accomplished. This idea of old-fashioned elbow grease brings up a new dimension to the ideas of being able to genetically enhance human beings. It is the creatine of the intellectual world. Many studies show that IQ is not a particularly good standard for assessing future success and many are now pushing that grit is more important than raw intelligence. In Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, he describes from a sociologists perspective the influence that the opportunity to do work (and doing that work) contributes to future success. He finds that it is the people that had the most opportunites to do a specific task that become true outliers. He shows that it is hard work and determination for long-term goals that are the factors of perfection and not natural talent. This new spin on the idea of genetically enhancing humans does not fall under Sandel's drive to mastery in the same way that increasing IQ does. If you could find the gene for hard-work would it really be wrong to manipulate it? What is wrong with having people that work harder? Some countries already have a reputation for working harder than others (not to fill into stereotypes) but in the continuance of globalization in the world Americans face an uphill battle as the Chinese and Indians enter the job market and prove to be harder working than their American counterparts. So if hard work and commitment to long term goals really does dictate success than would you have any problem with turning this gene on?

Brought Back to Life

In class I talked about a hypothetical experiment where religious zealots could be given the means to kill themselves and then be brought back to life in order to get a glimpse of what the afterlife might look like. Obviously, this experiment is made up, but there is significant research going into the actual phenomenon of what happens when people die and then are brought back to life. These people have incredibly similar accounts that center around a long tunnel with a bright light at the end. They describe colors that they have never seen before and encounters and conversations with relatives and friends they have lost. They also describe the bright light as a strong but comforting presence. They note that things just feel right. Sometimes the relatives even tell them it is not their time and they return to the body and can even see their bodies on the table as if their spirit is hovering above. A single case of this might be dismissed but there are literally thousands of documented cases where people describe all of these same basic principles. These experiences lead to interesting and provocative questions about the after life. Many want to believe that these people are actually experiencing the journey to "heaven" and that bright presence is the god-like figure described in most religions. However, a theory that can be equally true is that the brain is in severe distress and during the time when the body dies the person has thought so intensely that death "should" look like a bright light at the end of the tunnel that this is what they actually see. They might not actually be "dead" because death is not a moment but a process. When the heart stops the brain is not necessarily completely dead, although brain death is very quick to follow. These results are some of the most interesting and some might say that experiments on terminally ill patients wanting to attempt to find god and further their religious sentiments should be able to try to explore this idea because they really do not put a price on finding out if there is an afterlife.

The Giver

If after our class discussion on eugenics you want to read some novel related to the topic, a good choice is The Giver by Lois Lowry (if you haven’t read it yet). I read the book a year ago, and although my recollection may not be accurate, the book basically depicts a perfect community in which the technology has advanced to the degree that gene sequences in zygotes are modified so that people can’t perceive each other’s differences in traits any more. The community people live in is perfectly harmonious, without crimes, discriminations, or wars. A committee made of the wise controls everything in the society one can think of: family make-up, occupation, daily activities, information people receive, etc. Once the kids in this community reach a certain age they get assigned to occupations that they will do their whole life. The story is centered around how Jonas, the protagonist, gets this job that involves him experiencing all the painful, disastrous, and miserable memories in human history. The Giver is only assigned to one person in the society so Jonas bears all the heaviness from the past. From Jonas’s decision in the end, Ms. Lowry reveals what she thinks would happen if scientific experimentation on human beings goes unregulated, or develops with too much emphasis on science.

Health Disparities

There are people in the United States living in conditions similar to those of the developing world. In Washington D.C., among the black community, HIV rates are higher than those in seven African nations that receive funding from the US for HIV prevention and treatment (Teblas). In addition, many Native Americans in the United States are denied treatment for serious illnesses, some even dying while on the waiting list for treatment, or suffering from full-blown breast cancer when, if they had received treatment earlier, the warning lump could have been treated easily. According to a recent New York Times article, in Native American hospital nationally there is a 20% deficit in doctors and a 25% deficit of nurses.

With regard to the Native Americans, the issue appears to be that some politicians believe that since the United States has given the Native Americans rights to their land, they should not have to subsidize their healthcare on that land.  This is an interesting dilemma. It appears that the politicians apposing these subsidies have a grudge against the Native Americans for insisting on having their own independent reservations. Because, why not use the same argument for not giving aid to African nations? It does not make sense to deny Native Americans funding while sending aid far away to Africa.

Furthermore, with regard to the African American community, there is no excuse for having such healthcare disparities. African Americans tend to receive inferior care in a wide range of diseases and  are also often subject to higher rates of illness. This seems to me to be unacceptable. There is no reason for African Americans (nor Native Americans) to receive inferior treatment to whites while living in the same country.

Sources:

“New Hopes on Health Care for American Indians.” New York Times. 1 Dec. 2009. 

“Research Finds Wide Disparities in Health Care by Race and Region.” New York Times. 5 Jun. 2008. 

Pablo Teblas. World AIDS Week Talk – Rocky Private Dining Room Dec. 1.