Monday, August 01, 2005

Be Fruitful and Multiply

I was reading an article in National Geographic last night about stem cell therapy when I had a new insight into Genesis.

Chapter 2 tells us that God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep, and then taking one of Adam's ribs, he formed Eve.

From one creature, suddenly there were two.

Mitosis.

5 comments:

Anthony said...

One question: how on earth did you come across "Lego Bible stories"?

Andy said...

Some people use King James, I use Legos.

Anonymous said...

Along those lines, why would it be so wrong to use my brother's stem cells to grow me a organ -- my heart can keep me company and it won't eat from the tree of knowledge.

Andy said...

It's wrong for people who consider that a 5 day old blastocyst smaller than this period "." is a human life, and to destroy it is tantamount to murder.

I think the more important, and vastly more complex, question is to what extent we are willing to play God. Curing diseases is all very well, but stem cells are just one part of an enormous ethical dilemma. Do we stop at curing diseases? Or do we start engineering humans to process food more efficiently, to make them taller, to improve muscle mass, to reduce obesity, to increase genetic traits that improve intelligence...where will we draw the line? How will we enforce it? At what point have we changed from evolving to engineered?

Matthew said...

More broadly, would it even be a bad thing to move from evolving to engineered?