|
Science Is not for the Faint of Heart
George W. Bush hopes to limit government funding on such research. But there's no holding back science. Trying to stop scientific progress is as futile for the government today as it was for the Roman Catholic Church when it excommunicated Galileo centuries ago for discovering that the sun was at the center of our universe. Yet scientific progress is perceived as just as much a threat today as then. Science continues to challenge truth and morality like nothing else in the world. Human cloning and stem cell research is thought as threats to society because they may lead to human reproduction beyond the traditional mode. Such research hints of everlasting life on one hand, yet on the other hand, conjures up night marish images of human fetuses feasted upon by the living. But this development is just the tip of the iceberg. Those who daily delve into the media get daily shock. Science is pushing society to a new frontier whether it wants to make the journey or not. The road seems strange and untested. Does it lead us to the realm of heaven... or hell? The New Yorker magazine recently did a story about a convict found guilty of murder, Joseph Paul Jernigen, who was executed. Before his death, he agreed to give his body to science. Jernigan's body was quartered, dissected, sliced and eventually reduced to pulp, but not before each literal slice of him was photographed from every angle and reassembled on the internet as the "Visible Human Male." Other uses of the discarded human body are even more startling. It was shocking enough when artists like Damien Hirst used animals for "art" such as those segmented cows and sheep displayed in formaldehyde and plastic. It was just a matter of time before humans would be used too. Dr. Gunther von Hagens, who discovered a method of infusing whole human bodies preserved in plastic, has displayed "human sculpture" at museums in Europe and Japan where they have drawn millionsof viewers. Examples of his work include a man who has been skinned and split longitudinally and a man posed as if running, his muscles exposed to show underlying bodily structures. A third example is a skinned woman with her womb exposed to show a five month infant she was carrying when she died. How long before these interesting displays are available for viewing at the Saluda Museum? Society is racing along like a locomotive and it's bound to have its effect even on Middlesex County. I can imagine the Middlesex Board of Supervisors, now struggling with gun issues, dealing with the human art issue. The poignant story of a 14 year old boy, Nicholas Breach, has recently come to press. He had a brain tumor, was expected to die and had agreed to donate his organs. Since organs need to be harvested immediately, surgeons watched on the sidelines, perhaps like sharks waiting to snap. The boy asked his parents if he would be dead when his organs were "taken," and then wondered whether he might be taken prematurely if the need for organs were so urgent. We dispute both when life begins and when death occurs. In the past, "brain death" has been used as one measure of death. Now doctors question whether this is really a "death event" or is it merely a convenient time to help ourselves to desperately needed organs? Another scientific development is new opportunity for entertainment. Have nothing special planned for the day? How about viewing an interesting surgery? Almost any sort of surgery can be observedtoday on the internet, cable TV and even CD Roms. A celebrity, a singer, recently had a stomach reduction operation that was actually advertised as a web event. Will others agree to be filmed during their cornea transplants, colonoscopies,and open heart surgeries for general public viewing? Will such events replace the old movies of yesteryear as the public finds new sources for titillation? As we read the Sentinel, fetuses are growing in plastic wombs in laboratories. Want to order a baby and dodge the inconvenience of producing your own? Just pull out your wallet and place your order. Perhaps not today, but certainly tomorrow. But what are we poor souls in the hinterlands to think? It used to be that old age was not for the faint of heart. Now even the young must be prepared for daily shock. Politicians, theologians, philosophers and almost everyone else are reconsidering ethics. Even the lunch bunch down at Marshall's drug store has probably discussed stem cell research and human cloning. Everyone is concerned. It is as if the moral foundation of the past is in sudden need of rehaul. Should we shudder at visions of possible black market fetus farms where human life is created in the lab in order to seek bodily parts and cells for the living with any human organ available for transplant for a price? Such vision is no longer sci-fi fantasy but very much within reach. Science has given new meaning to Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest. It is not just the strongest species that can eat others that will survive. It is the species that first learns how to glean bodily parts from another that will survive. Science has shown new definition to yesterday's terms of predator and prey which now includes human potential. Oh, how smart we are, we who will play God now with our every creation. But will the king of the forest, master of the land, and now aspiring lord of the universe find a way out of the perplexing,challenging moral dilemmas that our discoveries have triggered? In the future will such a nebulous, archaic thing as morality even concern us? Or will it be cast out along with the human pulp of Jerginson's body on the bone heap of marching civilization? Finally, in the act of galloping full speed ahead in the quest for eternal human life... will we end up losing a part of humanity that science has never discovered? Will scientists ignore the one human feature that cannot be located, quartered, sliced, disassembled, photographed, reassembled and put for all to see on the world wide web? Dare I suggest our very soul? |