Medical-Science Breaking the Ethics Barrier
It's certainly good news. On the surface of the facts now emerging regarding the early success realized by two biological scientist in transforming ordinary human skin cells into embryonic stem cells by tickling them into reaction through the insertion of 4 genes, we have entered a new phase in scientific research. Capable of functioning for the purpose of creating specific-function cells as a precursor to emulating natural reproduction this is an amazing breakthrough.With incredible potential, for this breakthrough is yet another advance, from another direction other than the one which has garnered so much criticism and suspicion. It's not merely good as a promising source of healing wracked human bodies with outstanding purport for the future of mankind; it's amazing. Which is to say, in the ability for the future of medical science to insert itself and its genius in creating options and a living future for people whose debilitating, life-shortening diseases and conditions may now be ameliorated.
The good news in another facet of the announcement is that there need now no longer be impediments in the way that such research and its promising applications may be funded. By charitable groups, by funding and research institutions, by private philanthropy, and by government itself, troubled by an urge of conscience or a belief in a higher spiritual being which dictates that the use of stem cells, as founts of human life is unethical. That by utilizing these potential life-giving cells for scientific enquiry, a human life has been sacrificed.
And that, furthermore, by dabbling in the arcane and little-understood process by which life can be manipulated through scientific enquiry and a myriad of experiments. Thus undertaking to do, through human hands and cerebral functioning, what God Almighty only is thought to be capable of performing. Contesting as it were, His monopoly on life, and in the process, negating His Divinity by an oppositional lack of judgement on the part of those who place science and the advance of medical intervention in life-challenging situations foremost.
Now here is a new technology, perfected to a certain degree, but only, it would seem, to the extent that it has been proven feasible to use normal skin cells comprising human tissue, and maneuvering them to produce a reaction; charging them to behave in the manner of embryonic cells capable of turning into and functioning as the 220 different direct-purpose cells in the makeup of a human being with all the concomitant and variousness of purpose, from blood, bones, eyes, tendons, sinews, muscles and yes, skin.
It's early days yet, and there can be no assurances that this new method of producing stem cell variants will be entirely convincing in the final analysis. Sufficiently so to repair hearts or spinal cords, restore sight or hearing loss and impairment, the deadly deterioration aligned with diabetes, cystic fibrosis, and other diseases that plague humankind. But it is another, and highly feasible direction to hope that medical science can continue its successful devising of alternatives to early death through the misadventure of disease or injury.
Should the ultimate research be successful, and the implantation become possible, of repair-purpose cells structured through manipulation from a patient's own original skin cells, the potential for failure is minimized considerably. The body's auto-immune response will then be forestalled as it recognizes its own cells, albeit altered to perform specific life-assisting properties. Eliminating the need for a recipient to be chained to the lifelong use of anti-rejection drugs with their own threat of iatrogenic complications.
The process would no longer compel the rejection of moral theorists and religious arbiters of permissive techniques of intervention who feel that human dignity has been impaired through the manipulation and destruction of a life-endowing human stem cell. Much as so many among us would readily give assent to the use of undifferentiated cell masses (foetuses), even stem cells, as being nothing more than tissues of potential for the use of medical research and eventual cures to whatever ails our mortal bodies, medical ethics itself seem to stand in the way of such progress.
The World Medical Association took it upon itself to declare a solemn pledge in 1964: "In medical research on human subjects, considerations related to the well being of the human subject should take precedence over the interests of science and society." Identifying the "human subject" with the human stem cell, a life not yet realized. Thereby recognizing the potential for life in that significant cell as being a human in its not-yet realized state of development.
Of course there is a philosophical school that adheres to the belief that all animal life is sacred, not merely that branch of animal life dedicated to humankind. That animals other than humans are capable of having and feeling emotions. They think, they react to situations within their environment, they have the capabilities of learning from their experiences, they are able to manipulate their environments. Yet the ethical question of their use as experimental subjects doesn't cause quite the same moral recoil.
Despite which there are more than enough individuals, scientists as well as the lay public, who believe implicitly that advances in medical research and human understanding should not be held back by high-flown beliefs in matters spiritual; that practicality and utilitarianism should trump in such high-stakes games resulting in potentially beneficial gifts to humanity. If this avenue does open opportunities to achieve the same potentials that appear inherent in embryonic research techniques, that source will now likely flounder on the shoals of total rejection.
Shutting off an earlier promising, and, in large part, successful avenue of progress in medical science and experimentation. One beset by moral objections from, among other sources, the Roman Catholic Church. Which institution has been swift in giving its seal of approval to this promising new research tool now emerging. Either way we may be promised an advanced and dependable long-range control over our genetic future.
And that can only be a good thing for all of us. Once we become successful in battling the problems besetting mankind by the failures of our mortally susceptible bodies, perhaps we can then turn our attention to a far more puzzling and obviously complicated portion of our physical-psychic beings, our brains. Eventually, if at all possible, determining why it is we function so emotively counter-productively to our very existence on this earth.
Labels: Human Fallibility, Nature, Viewpoint
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, November 24, 2007
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