genetic engineering

What if your only child died or was dying from an accident and cloning was the only way to save them?

Making a child for the sole purpose of using them to cure someone definitely seems unethical.  The fact that you would need to clone someone in order to save them is also fairly absurd.  There have been recent developments where it was possibly to transplant a trachea into a person that was grown from their own stem cells.  But growing a person is definitely unethical, the person would have a mind and consciousness, and you would use this human being to save someone without asking whether they wanted to try to save them.  If a child is born through cloning, whether in a test tube or naturally born, what connection would the parents have to that child, the child would always be second when it came down to it.  The child was born to save the first therefore the first was more important, and how can you love a child that you had through desperation?  It seems like a sick idea when not situational.  The child might even be put up for adoption after being used, disposed of.  Also, the fact that it takes a child around 12 years to even get their heads to the same sizes as they will be when they are adults poses the question of what disease could really put aside that long to wait for a child to develop to normal size?  And after 10 years or more with a child, raising it as one’s own, who could then use their flesh in blood like that, even if it was to save their only other child.  Now I definitely believe that no child should die before their parents, but to save someone a full cloning is almost an absurdity in the first place.  The only things that a person would need a full body clone for would be if their entire body began to shut down, and if that happened we don’t have the technology to perform a trans-body surgery so it would be pointless.  Now, I have no clue what I would decide on in the moment; but, I do believe that creating a child for the sole purpose of exploiting them is ridiculous.

Would you be willing to be part of a genetic experiment that not only strengthened your muscles but prevented them from deteriorating with age?

This experiment would first off seem very sketchy, and no I would not participate in this experiment.  Due to the fact that it is an experiment I wouldn’t want to get anywhere near what they are sticking in those patients and volunteers.  Genetic engineering is an emerging field and with very little knowledge about how exactly the body does some things and what the body’s reasons are for not developing a certain way.  If this treatment became publicly available after significant testing and extreme scrutiny, I might just take a risk and go for it.  I feel that this kind of research should go to curing disease, not to becoming the next best steroid.  And if it becomes available or even possible I will bet that somewhere someone will be abusing it for personal gain, not personal repair.   If the world got to a point where our old folks no longer died of body break down related old age where would we keep everyone? Old folks homes would go out of business and people would live until their body spontaneously failed or slowly went insane until their body finally did spontaneously fail.  Living a life where your mind disintegrates before your body seems like one not worth living, but then again living with only your mind can be torture.  The only cure is pure immortality, but then how much humanity can one person see before life is no longer fulfilling? Immortality doesn’t seem like it would be to amazing if your mind could never escape from inevitable life.  This just seems painful and unnecessary, I would much rather take a sane death than an immortal one.

Is this kind of genetic selection ethical?

I have recently watched the movie Gattaca, it is an interesting movie and even though it wouldn't make my top choices (or even get recommended to a friend) it had a good message.  Gattaca portrays a world where genetic engineering is not only common, it is the norm, in fact the world has slipped so far into the treacherous and unknown waters of this field that when a person is born without genetic engineering they are considered "in-valid".  This and the combination of ethics make for an interesting topic.
     Genetic engineering, scientists are making progress in this field of research and its very controversial.  On one hand you have the fact that it can’t not only make lives better but can save lives before they ever need saving; on the other hand, the afflictions that may soon be cured have been the inspiration for many athletes, scientists, and politicians to accomplish great things.  Genetic engineering could be a great accomplishment for our society, possibly curing many diseases and much more.  But controlling how a baby matures and develops in life not only seem like cheating in a way but also remove the incentive for that person to try their hardest to succeed because everything would be easier for them to start off with.  Controlling fate, while I know this may make me seem old fashioned or "stuck in my ways", seems like it can too easily be transformed into controlling evolution and undermining natural things.  Because of the distinct things that could very well go too right with this science I feel that the research is not only unethical but unsafe.  Now there are those diseases that should be prevented or cured and genetic engineering is the only this that can get us to that point and striving for that does not seem unethical at all.  But, there has lately been an increase in the number of developed and developing genetically engineered pointless projects.  By this I mean things like making it so people cannot get fat, a perfume that is naturally secreted by the body, and other weird stuff like that.  This was one of the reasons Michael Crichton wrote his astounding book Jurassic Park, and also why genetic engineering is teetering into unknown and unethical territory.

Connections - 4

     In Michael Crichton’s novel, Jurassic Park, there are a few interesting philosophical rants throughout that run as Crichton’s voice through the characters.  Ian Malcolm is a chaotician, a type of mathematician specifically dealing with chaos theory.  After being mauled by a dinosaur Malcolm is put or some fairly large doses of Morphine, these allow him to speak very freely and much more philosophically.

     Malcolm begins to rant about how the Dino-Island will eventually collapse into chaos because you cannot properly control living creatures that you know almost nothing about.  Through these rants Malcolm points out some interesting ways to look at our recent scientific path to discovery.  He points out that throughout recent history scientists have not been very responsible.  Modern scientists obtain their research from other scientists, which means that they had to do nearly nothing to obtain the information.  Scientists then proceed to conduct tests and so on until they make their next big discovery.  Doing all of this helps our scientific development move much faster than an alternative, but there are also side effects.  Because scientists don’t have to do very much to obtain the research they don’t develop the necessary discipline to appropriately use the scientific power that they harness.  Crichton writes “…science can teach us how to build a nuclear reactor, but not if we should build it or not…”, and this makes sense because scientists often justify their ability to create dangerous yet spectacular things with the fact that if they shouldn’t then why do they know how to.  This lack of discipline is similar to inherited wealth; the heir often does not understand what it took to obtain the money and thus abuse their ability and power.  This lack of discipline in science can easily lead to massive catastrophe and dramatic disaster. Crichton poses a good argument we are becoming to free with our scientific power and really should put more ethical standards on research, even if it means not making man eating dinosaurs.

Sophie's World - 4

“If we will disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do much what as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly.” ~ John Locke

In the novel “Sophie’s World” a whole chapter is devoted to Locke.  Locke was a 17th century philosopher who had both interesting and poor (in a personal opinion) views of many different topics.  The quote above I found to be very interesting; Locke points out how some people won’t do thinks because they can’t do them in a certain way, in this case flying versus walking.  There are unfortunately people who still behave like this today, more than three centuries later.  Usually it is something much simpler than flying but many people won’t “be able” to do something because they can’t get there, while this is often understandable it can also easily be resolved with a little added effort. 

But more specifically in this context Locke is talking about those who give up because their desired way or thinking doesn’t work.  Instead Locke suggests that we should morph our thought process to reflect what we know and can do, as opposed to disparaging over what may seem impossibly complex.

This quote really shows what the chapter tries to explain about Locke.  Locke’s view about the belief that one can never know everything, and therefore we must not believe anything that shows up on our radar is that this statement is entirely false, while you can’t know everything you can learn from experience to congeal as much information as possible.

Connections - 3

One of the 95 reason that Martin Luther, founder of the protestant sect of Christianity, decided to separate from mainstream Christianity was due to indulgences.  Indulgences are a way of, essentially, paying your way out of your sins, the purgatory shortcut.  I found this picture online while I was trying to find something that made fun of indulgences as a talking point for this post, instead I found this:

This is the actual cover of The Handbook of Indulgences, I found this because I thought it was a fake book.  No, it is the real church publishing of how to use money to get out of paying for your sins in purgatory.  I thought that when the first church was set up after Jesus' death it had been a rule not to accept bribes?  Unfortunately some Christians seem to have forgotten their roots!

Wouldn't it be considered a sin to pay your way into Heaven?  Because for every sin you payed off you would have to pay for improperly repenting your sin.  And anyway, paying a priest to repent your sins for you or having someone else try to repent for you after your dead sounds like trying to cheat God to me, and while Jesus could kinda cheat by walking on water and getting resurrected he did it for others, supposedly.  But God is notorious for not liking cheaters in the Bible. But apparently it was proven through logic that if you support the church more than normal you get bonus credits that counter sin.

But if all that isn't a very strong case we can add in some logic and math.  Well, we know that according to indulgences sins are equal to money, therefore:

sin = money

And since we know that "money is everything" we can put that in,

sin = everything

And we know that "a first impression is everything" so,

sin = first impressions

Then there is also the fact that "first impressions are lasting impressions" and lasting means forever or infinite time, but time is always just time whether its long or not, and "time is money" therefore,

sin =  impressions^2

Also impressions are important so,

sin = important^2

Then you have to include the fact that peace is what is important which means

sin = peace^2

Confusing but lets continue, peace is the root of love leading to

sin = love

Not making much sense but what the hell, i made 250 reasonable words a while ago anyway, so what if the church is love as many people adamantly believe? Than,

sin = (The Church)

So we know sin is evil ... so using similar logic to some people who try to justify indulgences....

The Church = Evil

Well that stinks so either you believe that or you cant pay your way out of purgatory or you cant have indulgences.

Guess that'll be a dilemma for some people.

I made the above proof as a play on what we had discussed earlier in the week while talking about the cosmological argument developed by Saint Aquinas, it wasn't intended to be offensive to anyone who believes in Christian indulgence. This was intended to be logical but ridiculous showing that because something technically can be true doesn't make it right in the slightest bit, its all a matter of opinion.  For instance this can be taken a step further by saying that because E.V.I.L stands for Every Villain Is Lemons (taken from Spongebob) you could say that, when combined with the fact that The Church is a body of people and if it is evil it would make it a villain,  The Church = Lemons.

Source Code

Spoiler Alert

Is the ending a new "movie reality" (for lack of a better term)?  Why or why not?  Is it possible that Stevens' determination somehow merged the alternate universe with the movie's original reality? 

     Through out the movie Source Code Captain Colter Stevens is sent back and forth through the source code many times.  In between these missions of varying success, we learn that the source code allows a person (Capt. Stevens) to relive the last eight minutes of someone else’s life (Sean Fentress).  We are also led to believe that the source code is like a video game, with amazing graphics of course.  The Source Code seems to be a computer program where you can have an infinite amount of detail in the last eight minutes of a person’s life, places they had not been and may never have been are clear as day, and only when you try to get out of the source code or try to change your “ending”, you will inevitably either die or the source code will break down.  The fact that Capt. Stevens is still alive as Sean Fentress after the source code is terminated (the end of eight minutes) and after his body and mind are taken off of life support and his body dies his new reality as a teacher continues, and possibly his consciousness is transferred to this alternate timeline.  If the source code were just a video game, with the greatest possible incentive for not dying you could possibly have (besides a metric ton of cash), Stevens would have been “terminated” with his body and the source code.  Now, if we look at what happens when Dr. Rutledge tries to explain the source code, he tries to avoid describing it in any real detail and tries to push it aside as “quantum mechanics” almost as if he more discovered it rather than invented it.  Because the source code is used so many times it very well could have made a new time stream through quantum mechanics, or there could be a me right now that actually got this in before class started, we may never really know.  But there seems to be a different time stream at the end of the film.  Captain Stevens “determinism”, that seemed mostly forced on him by our friendly neighborhood secret time reassignment bureau, may have caused enough turbulence in our time stream to make it branch off into an alternate reality. 

It seems that the source code is not so much time reassignment, so much as it is time stream manipulation.

Sophie's World - 3

In the book Sophie's World there are several points at which Sophie somehow obtains something that previously belonged to Hilde. At one point Sophie finds Hilde’s scarf, at another Hilde’s ten crowns, and at yet another point Sophie finds Hilde’s gold crucifix. There are many strange and mysterious things that circulate around these items, and this is only accented by the fact that Alberto, our mysterious philosopher, seems to know all the answers but won’t reveal anything concrete or straightforward.

In the section “History and Medicine” Sophie finds Hilde’s scarf under her bed in her room. This is very confusing but before the question of what does it resemble in the book came to mind there was the moderately prominent question of “how the heck did the scarf get there in the first place?” Latter in the novel Alberto explains that the reason the scarf is there is due to the fact “sometimes personal property gets mixed up. Especially at school…, and this is a philosophy school”, what does that mean? Well obviously he has to be full of something, whether you want to call it philosophy is for another time and place though. While this seems kind of a cute thing to say, it’s defiantly creepy, especially from an older man that uses a dog to deliver his philosophy lessons. A ways later in the book we learn that Alberto put the scarf under Sophie’s bed, which raises a question of not only how he got into her house but if that is too questionable thing for him to do if he does it in good intent. Later still in the novel we discover that the crucifix was “sent” to Sophie by Albert Knag through some unknown means. When Alberto discovers this he flips, being a little over dramatic. But it raises a point about why Alberto took it so drastically, it could be that when Albert exercised his power it made Alberto feel inferior or unprotected, which would make sense. But there is also a possibility of a connection to the fact that they have very similar names, Alberto Knox and Albert Knag. They could be some pair of feuding philosophical deities who are training young children for an all out philosophical cage match, or it could be that they are supposed to represent two drastically different views of philosophy, either past versus present or something like Cynics versus Stoics. But the connections are still forming and while defiantly confusing, they are getting clearer and more frustratingly difficult to logically connect. But then again what is logic but what most philosophy is based off of.