Slippery Rollercoaster

I'm not even sure how I feel about this, but it's dangerous territory for debate. Naturally, I want to stir that up a bit...

British MPs ... blocked a bill which would have banned the creation of inter-species embryos by a vote of 336 to 176.

Critics had argued that creating human-animal embryos would be a "step too far" and ethically questionable -- some going so far as to brand the technique "Frankenstein science."

But Prime Minister Gordon Brown told a British newspaper that such cutting edge research could "bring new cures and treatments to millions of people."

I am in favour of most forms of actual progress (as opposed to plain "development" or expansion), but this stuff is a big can of worms. The inconsistencies in my personality are revealed very effectively by my responses on this topic.

Being non-religious (technical term for my position is "agnostic") my morality is my own, not out of anyone's books. That does not, for the record make things simpler but rather more complex since I have no assurance that I'm right past what my gut tells me. My gut is by far the smartest part of me, and even it has problems here.

One thing I am categorically opposed to is raising another child for the sole reason of providing a tissue or organ bank for a sibling. It's one thing to know that you were a surprise or an accident, but there are pleasant surprises and happy accidents, so that's not the end of it all. Being put up for adoption because you weren't part of the plan is a selfish act by your parents OR in your best interest, depending on the circumstances, so again a hard thing to generalize about.

I cannot see how a child who was born just for that purpose would feel about it. The first thing that I think is that it seems the well-being of the first child is more important to you than that of the "saviour" one. The term "saviour" is a bit loaded too; coming from a Christian-based culture it suggests suffering for the greater good. Maybe I'm reading to much into that, but it fits pretty well.

In all of this a line has to be drawn somewhere, and for me personally an embryo is just a bunch of cells until it's formed into something that at least looks like a person, and even then until it's capable of surviving on its' own it's not really child to me either. Those are my (blurry) lines, and others can feel free to have their own.

Based on that, pretty much anything you want to do to a bunch of cells is fine with me as long as that is as far as those cells will develop. The slope for me appears with how far along you allow the development of these hybrids to develop. Science has no morality of its' own, and coupled with capitalism, if left unfettered anything can and will happen.

We have laws for this reason, and so far Britain is being fairly progressive but not in "The Island of Dr. Moreau" territory just yet. Parting one kid out for your other kid(s) will remain repugnant for me whatever they say. There are other things that can be done which don't (I feel) necessarily push things over the edge.

The creation of life is a crapshoot, and loading the dice a bit in your favour isn't out of the question as far as I'm concerned. For that reason I have no fundamental objection to a bit of genetic engineering, but I really don't know if we can figure out what you can safely take out/put in without a lot of experimentation. It is the human results of that experimentation that I would not be prepared to face, as I couldn't justify what I had done on the basis of necessity.

What is necessity? Your only child will die unless they get an exact tissue match? At this point you should ask yourself why you're having children in the first place, and I won't even try to answer that for you. There is a certain amount of risk in life; the Nanny State would like to remove as much of it as possible but I think this separates us too much from whatever laws of nature govern our reproduction and survival.

While on that note, I think there are far too many of us. Unlike some people I don't propose to fix that myself, but I strongly feel that something will eventually arrive to cut us back. Yes I just finished re-reading "The Stand" but that is merely co-incidental. There are enough influenzas, Ebolas, etc. of various sorts to do the job without some sort of man-made disaster stemming from genetic engineering, so I don't worry about that as an existential threat.

Not too coherent but I'm not being marked on it, I'm just venting. Whatever the UK government comes up with now, that won't be the end of it even if somebody spawns the Queen of the Harpies out of this animal embryo thing. Buggered if I know all the hidden laws and the balance of Nature, so I'll just go with my gut and play the hand that's dealt me as best I can. I will however think about it as I do so.