Monday, March 9th 2009 – President Obama strikes again and has ordered the legal ban lifted on stem cell research. This medical procedure sees laboratories harvest stem cells from embryos, umbilical cords and adult bone marrow that have just been formed and thus do not yet have an assigned task. The goal is to be able to dictate the future development of these cells into brain cells to treat Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s or new marrow to cure leukemia or nerve cells to reverse paralysis, or Lymphocytic, T and White blood cells to cure AIDS, etc. This new legislation ends an 8 year ban on any further breakthroughs in the field instituted in 2001 by none other than former-president George W. Bush.
Bush’s ban and subsequent vetoes to block a senate reversal of the ban were motivated religiously as he has often admitted to the public. Along with the Vatican and anti-abortion groups, Republicans have today renewed their disgust of stem-cell research by calling it a mistake and a ‘slippery slope’. Their argument is seemingly based on ethics and science because they do not wish us to ‘grow’ stem cells and thus encourage women to abort in order to contribute to medical cures that could or couldn’t be just around the corner. Furthermore, the ‘slippery slope’ refers to the inevitable and eventual cultivation of human beings through cloning that will be made possible by stem cells for the sake of procreation, harvesting organs and other Orwellian nightmares. I do not deny or mock these fears, they are certainly valid. The problem is that president Obama directly reassured these fears as soon as he lifted the ban: ‘…only research meeting strict ethical guidelines would be allowed, under no circumstances would stem cells be used for research into human cloning’. Perhaps groups that oppose the legislation simply read the headlines and jumped straight to the streets in protest. Also, the preoccupations of the opponents are frustrating to me because they claim scientificity, whereas they are clearly moral. And, if asked, the groups I mentioned will never shy away from affirming that these morals stem from their faith, their religious beliefs. President Obama can in no way be reproached for retracting politics and Church from scientific endeavour; this is how the American nation was painstakingly founded over two centuries ago.
To continue the logical thought of these opposition groups, we should allow and/or ban all medical research according to religious morals. Who says they have to be exclusively Christian morals?
In the late Ist century AD, a man named Pliny the Elder realised that knowledge could be simply forgotten unless someone writes it down. This is why he devoted his life to writing the Historia Naturalis or the Natural History of the World. From tomatoes to coal, to lavender and Kidneys, to chimeras and faraway giants, Pliny collected data (be it written, told, rumoured…) and put to paper everything known about everything at the time. In chapters 28 to 32, Pliny elaborates medicine, or more precisely, the pharmacological recipes known to Pliny that could cure all things. Based on his religious beliefs (certain substances are associated with certain Gods giving them certain properties) and his own brand of logic, Pliny gave us what was right, respected and morally acceptable as medical practice in the Greco-Roman world that began our era. For example, drops of pigeon blood mixed with a concoction of spleenwort, honey and red wine could be applied to a wool bandage and placed over the eyes to cure bloodshot eyes. Also, to get rid of pesky malaria (called Quartan fever at the time), one would bind a nail used in crucifixion to one’s head with a cotton bandage and sprinkle burnt manure over the nail. It sounds like magical nonsense to us but they felt as strongly about this as the Republicans, anti-abortion activists and Catholic clergy seem to feel against stem-cell research.
To conclude, medicine should never be impeded or promoted by religion. Otherwise, we again fall into the ‘whose religion is more legitimate game’ and although the Christian Churches would like to believe, they do not win this by default in a free world. I say Voodoo sacrificial rituals, Muslim abstinence from harmful alcohol and Scientologist consumption of fresh babies for eternal youth cannot be discounted in the legislation of scientific research if Catholicism indeed has a ‘moral’ say in it.
(Pictured: Pliny's Historia Naturalis - Stem cells with an added fluorescent marker.)
End.
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