Breast Milk contains Stem Cells

The use and harvest of stem cells has been a moral quagmire for the last decade. On the one hand, stem cells - the undifferentiated cells that will eventually form all of the highly-specialized cells throughout your body - could be extremely useful for treating diseases ranging from cancer to Alzheimer's disease. On the other hand, the primary source for stem cells is aborted fetuses, many of whom were created and aborted specifically to harvest these cells. When one believes human life begins at conception, it is a case of trading one human life for another, without consent.

But new research may offer hope for stem cell therapies without the moral complications. It turns out breast milk may be up to 2% stem cells. This may provide a cheap and renewable source of stem cells for research and therapy, and may allow pregnant women to "bank" a supply of stem cells during their reproductive years for use later on if they develop disease.

If Embryonic Stem Cells are okay, why isn't Cloning?

Maybe I have read too much science fiction, but President Obama's latest order on stem cells seems self-contradictory to me. On the one hand, he endorses the use of embryonic stem cells - a moral issue for those who believe embryos are "human life" where embryos may be created and destroyed to harvest stem cells. On the other hand he condemns the use of stem cells for human cloning.

Obama also said the stem cell policy is designed so that it "never opens the door to the use of cloning for human reproduction." Such cloning, he said, "is dangerous, profoundly wrong, and has no place in our society or any society."

The statement that cloning is "profoundly wrong" is made without any defense or philosophical rationale. He simply assumes it is obvious. But it is not. If you are not worried about "human life" in embryos, how is cloning different from producing twins from current fertility techniques? (*cough* octo-mom *cough*) Can anyone out there explain this to me logically?

Or is it just that to Barack Obama stem cell research "feels right" and cloning "feels wrong"?

Experiment flirts with the barrier between Life and Non-Life

One of the great unsolved mysteries of science has always been where Life and Non-Living Chemistry meet. Life is capable of reproducing itself, of consuming energy, and of growing with time. There have always been some aspects of chemistry which seem to fit this criteria - crystals for example - but they obviously did not really show aspects of life. Now, scientists in California believe they have found the dividing line by creating a set of RNA molecules from scratch which are capable of self-replication.

The system, created by Gerald Joyce and Tracey Lincoln at the Scripps research institute in La Jolla, California, involves a cross-replicating pair of ribozymes (RNA enzymes), each about 70 nucleotides long, which catalyse each other's synthesis. So the 'left' ribozyme templates the synthesis of the 'right', which in turn templates the 'left' and so on, building each other via Watson-Crick base pairing.

'This is the very end of the line, where chemistry starts turning into biology,' says Joyce. 'It's the first case, other than in biology, of molecular information having been immortalised.'

Some, of course, will say this another nail in the coffin of a Creator God. Others will say it is proof that scientists lie. Wiser heads will realize it says neither, but is another window into how Life works and perhaps the mechanisms that drive our own bodies.

The Value of Life In a "Me First" Society

I was disturbed over the report of a temporary worker, Jdimytai Damour, at Wal-Mart who was trampled to death on Black Friday. I did not get a chance to blog about it at the time, but with more stories coming out, it appears to be even worse than I imagined. For anyone who has not heard about the incident, a temporary worker at Wal-Mart who was posted at the front door was trampled to death by a crowd that broke down the doors in order to get into the store for the Black Friday bargains.

So, Damour must have been older and smaller for this to happen, right? In fact, he was 34 years old, 6'5", weighing 270 pounds. Quoting Nassau County Police Commissioner Lawrence Mulvey, "Literally anyone, those hundreds of people who did make their way into the store, literally had to step over or around him or unfortunately on him to get into the Wal-Mart store." Estimates were that the crowd was about 2,000 people. [see Wal-Mart Worker Trampled to Death Lacked Training, Attorney Says] Now, when a crowd of 2,000 people is all pushing in the same direction it is very hard to stop or you risk getting trampled yourself. If this had been 2,000 people running out of the store for their life, I would understand. Two thousand people pushing and shoving to get into a store? That's evidence of a "Me First" society and it cost a man his life.

Damour's coworker, Jimmy Overby, describes the account first hand. "They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too ... I literally had to fight people off my back." [See Wal-Mart Worker Dies When Shoppers Break Down Doors]

And if that's not enough of, "Other workers were trampled as they tried to rescue the man, and customers stepped over him and became irate when officials said the store was closing because of the death, police and witnesses said." [See Police Reviewing Video to Identify Shoppers in Wal-Mart Stampede That Killed Worker] So let me get this straight, a man is TRAMPLED TO DEATH and you're upset because you're not getting your bargain?

While police are trying to review any video surveillance, it is difficult to not only identify people, but also figure out who is liable. [See Police Try to ID Shoppers in Wal-Mart Trampling Death Surveillance Tape]

Damour's biggest crime? "[He was] trying to shield a pregnant shopper from the throngs of bargain hunters pushing their way in." [See Lawyer: Family of Trampled Worker Sues Wal-Mart Over Death] That's right, Jdimytai Damour a 34 year old, 6'5", 270 pound man was crushed to death because he was trying to protect a pregnant woman from a crowd who had to have their bargain no matter what the cost.

Damour's siblings are suing different groups that they feel were responsible including Wal-Mart (Damour had no crowd control training). Sadly, the people who are really responsible will probably not even get caught.

To the family of Jdimytai Damour, we offer our condolences. The greed and "Me First" attitude that has taken over our culture is appalling.

I hope that this incident will serve as a wake-up to our society; however, I fear that stories like this will only become more and more common.

Where should politics and religion intersect?

Another interesting post went up recently at Revolution in Jesusland, a blog by a former (?) atheist who is studying the movement in Christianity today to revitalize itself. There is a lot of interesting stuff in there, but the piece that caught my attention was this.

On those points, the movement answers: "Okay, maybe, but Jesus never taught us to ‘take power.’ And so we must limit ourselves to witnessing from the ‘bottom’ and never try to put ourselves on ‘top’ in positions of power."

In college, I had friends who went off to join a weird little secretive Maoist party that was active on campus. It was a crazy thing to watch as they transported themselves back in time to the China of the 1940s. All their calculations about making social change here in America were messed up because their paradigm was based on the regime that Mao Zedong’s communists lived under as young persecuted revolutionaries. I think there’s a bit of that going on with this movement of Christian revolutionaries today. Too often, they’re applying the Way of Jesus to our modern-day world as though nothing has changed since the first-century Roman Empire.

But haven’t 2,000 years of redemptive history taken place since then?

This is a debate that Ward and I have from time to time. Where is Christianity supposed to be a "personal" phenomenon and where it is supposed to be a larger political force in the world. To break it down to the bare essentials of our argument, I would say the two sides are: (Nomad) "Jesus did not work on a political level and overtly rejected politics as a means to his ends. Thus, we should focus on the person-to-person side of our Christianity." (Ward) "Jesus's teachings affect all aspects of our lives and politics are just one more extension of our lives. Thus, our politics should be an active reflection of our morality and our Christianity." (This is obviously so simplistic as to almost be a caricature of the arguments, but I trust you get the point. Please be charitable in your responses.)

The question I continue to struggle with is how our personal sphere and the political sphere should intersect as Christians. Some people have wrought major change with political movements - Pat Robertson, the Moral Majority etc. But in the end, most of these are seen as failures or even embarrassments to the Church. But overall, the Christian movements that I see which have transformed our society have been apolitical - Promise Keepers, Billy Graham, etc.

What do Mod-Bloggers thing?

Philosophy on the rise in Colleges

I don't know how many Mod-Blog readers know that I was a philosophy major in college. I started out in Physics and learned in my Sophomore year that I did not want to spend the rest of my life eating, breathing, and thinking Mathematics 24/7. Philosophy - augmented by mathematics and computer science - turned into a major for learning LOGIC, which has been invaluable to my career in Information Technology.

In an age where NONE of my friends got a job in the area they majored in, doesn't it make sense to choose a major which prepares you for LIFE rather than for a particular field? Apparently, many, many college students are thinking the same way as philosophy departments across the country are seeing a huge boom in enrollment.

Life is a car ride...

Sigh

Welcome to a Fallen World

Note to self, try to die solvent

A British man thought he had beaten the system. He was informed by doctors that he had a year to live. He promptly stopped paying his bills and his mortgage, went on a spending spree, and lived the life of his dreams. Everything was great! Then came the problem. Doctors called back and revealed good news: he was NOT dying but instead merely had an inflamed prostate. Unfortunately, this means he was now alive, healthy, and pretty much bankrupt.

Lesson learned. Nothing is certain. Not even death.