Genomic science is rushing ahead, presenting many problems. On
November 25, Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), an American firm,
announced that it had cloned a human embryo. In simple terms,
cloning is the process of creating multiple identical copies of
an organism from a single "somatic" cell without sexual reproduction.
The news made headlines around the world and drew sharp criticism
from many leading experts in the field. Professor Ryuchi Ida,
the president of UNESCO's International Bioethics Committee (IBC)
says ACT's announcement highlights the attitude of American firms
"to put economic and scientific considerations before ethical
ones." (Unesco Sources, December 2001)
This attitude [Professor Ida says] is degrading the value of
human life. There has been no broad-based discussion in American
to find out what people think and how far they are prepared
to let the scientists go. This is due to the absolute and sacrosanct
freedom of American private enterprise. Yet this public debate
needs to take place.
The Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights,
prepared by the IBC adopted by UNESCO in 1997, clearly outlaws
the reproductive cloning of human beings (Article 11). However,
it is not binding on nation states. It has also set down an ethical
framework for such research. Created by UNESCO in 1993, the IBC
is the only global forum dealing with this issue. Its task is
to follow the progress of research in the life sciences and its
applications, and to expose the ethical issues at stake to ensure
that human dignity and freedom are respected and protected from
the potential drifts of such research.
There is a "widespread intuitive repulsion about the idea of
human cloning," and many feel that the limits of science and scientists
should have legal boundaries. An ethical safety net is becoming
essential.
ACT scientists say that their intention is not to produce a cloned
baby but to devise a way of obtaining embryonic stem cells which
can provide a ready supply of replacement tissue that would help
in the treatment of degenerative diseases like diabetes, strokes
and Parkinson's. Yet many have doubts that experiments will stop
there.
The core issue concerning embryonic stem cell research is: When
does life begin in the human embryo? Even many scientists now
believe that life begins right from the moment of fertilization.
The fact that the single fertilized egg has the full roadmap of
the form to be morphed within the short-time interval between
conception and delivery, itself proves that it does possess both
consciousness and life. Depriving the embryos of their potential
life or altering the course of their destiny to be used as stem
cells violates the natural moral law and destroys the dignity
of human life by treating the human being as a material commodity,
to be manipulated according to our whims and fancies.
The world Press has commented on the cloning and the consensus
is that it is an irresponsible thing to do. The London Times,
for instance, commented in a leader:
Philosophically, just how great a good can it be to churn out
embryonic human beings merely in order to dissect them for the
convenience of fully developed ones? And is it more, or less,
morally attractive to produce human freaks-for a clone is a
freakish thing-for our own convenience? And if you think it
is wrong to let clones be born, then why is it OK to produce
them and then "harvest" them at the embryo stage? Anyway, here
we are. It is now a dead cert that someone, somewhere, will
give birth to a cloned human baby.
There are several weighty considerations ignored by scientific
advances in this field. Can human life ever be cloned?
Scientists at ACT or elsewhere can at best clone cellular
life. For, what after all is it to be human? Scientists consider
the physical cell and the physical body as all that matters, but
what about the other constituents which go to make up a human
being? What about the "spiritual potency in the physical cell"
and other non-physical forces at work in the formation of the
embryo? What about the soul, without which a mere form can well
turn into a Frankenstein's monster?
….physical nature, when left to herself…can produce the first
two and the lower animal kingdoms, but when it comes to the
turn of man, spiritual, independent and intelligent powers are
required for his creation, besides the "coats of skin" and the
"Breath of animal Life." The human Monads of preceding Rounds
need something higher than purely physical materials to build
their personalities with, under the penalty of remaining even
below any "Frankenstein" animal. (The Secret Doctrine,
II, 56)
The tissues of our objective framework alone are subservient
to the analysis and researches of physiological science. The
six higher principles in them will evade for ever the hand that
is guided by an animus that purposely ignores and rejects the
Occult Sciences. (Ibid., I, 134)
John Polanyi, winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1986
and presently a professor at the University of Toronto, says,
following Linus Pauling, that the concepts of science and conscience
are not irreconcilable. "Philosophy, whether we acknowledge
it or not, underlies what we do." (New Perspectives Quarterly,
Summer 2001)
I feel bound to reflect on the meaning of words [writes Polanyi].
The first such is "science," which comes, of course, from
scientia, knowledge. We use it to denote knowledge
derived from observation of the outside world. The second
word is "conscience," with which I have linked science. Conscience
has the same root as science, but is the knowledge we carry
within us.
The type of knowing that we call science is inevitably linked
to the type we call conscience….It is true that as scientists
we try, in the interest of objectivity, to separate these
aspects of our being; to separate what we see from what we
know….At the same time we know that without our inner compass
we cannot hope to navigate the outer world. We have no choice
but to bring our science into touch with our conscience….
In their quest for patterns scientists have been sketching
nature in recent times to such effect that they have transformed
the accepted view of matter, energy, space, life, death and
the universe. Through this, they have reshaped the world we
live in, extending and enriching human life and, at the same
time, furnishing the ultimate machinery of death. There has
never before in history been a renaissance that so fundamentally
and so speedily transformed the world….
To move with assurance from science to conscience it is necessary
to take a closer look at the scientific community. One distinguishing
thing is that it is international. But what makes it function
as a community is its ethic. It has a shared ideal, which
is to put the truth ahead of personal advantage.
In brief, "value judgements" are a part of science. "Commitment
to truth," which scientists consider as their motto, is also
a commitment to morality. The two cannot be separated. This
needs to be emphasized today more than ever before in view of
new scientific developments posing serious ethical problems-e.g.,
the cloning of the human embryo.
Issues of Democracy for November 2001, a journal published
by the American Information Resource Centre, Mumbai, is devoted
to religious freedom as a universal human right. One of the
contributors to the issue, Derek H. Davis, the director of church-state
studies at Baylor University, examines the four pillars of international
religious freedom: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
the International covenant on civil and Political Rights; the
U.N. Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance
and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief; and the Vienna
Concluding Document. He also looks at how we must continue to
use international treaties to further religious freedom through
legislation, education, and a separation of church and state.
The World's Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893
was an important event in world religious history. It set the
stage, and the 20th century witnessed unprecedented progress
towards the internationalization of religious human rights.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United
Nations in 1948 is a landmark document, recognizing, among other
things, several important religious rights. Article 18 is the
key text:
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience
and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion
or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with
others and in public or private, to manifest his religion
or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Derek Davis comments:
The Declaration vigorously asserts that individual religious
differences must be respected. It embraces the political principle
that a key role of government is to protect religious choice,
not to mandate religious conformity. It took centuries, even
millennia, of religious wars and religious persecution for
the majority of modern nation-state to come to this position,
but the principle is now widely accepted….
Whereas the Declaration imposed a moral obligation upon all
signatory nations, later documents went further in creating
a legal obligation to comply with its broad principles….Nevertheless,
today's world is one in which religion still is a source of
great conflict, and fundamental principles of religious liberty
are often more abused than respected.
This is a sobering reminder that declarations, conventions
and other documents do not easily translate into reality. Mere
legislation does not suffice. Education is the key for transforming
international obligations into reality. This is an important
task today when religious persecution continues to be a serious
problem and much that goes by the name of religion is really
irreligion.
"Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and
be wise,:" says the Bible's Book of Proverbs. It is advice
that biologist Edward O. Wilson of Harvard has taken to heart
since his early years, When he grew fascinated by the complex
social behaviour of these insects. His latest project, outlined
in The Future of Life, is a blueprint for protecting
the world's wildlife and wild lands. In a dialogue with Discover
magazine's associate editor he said:
There are about one million trillion insects alive at any
moment. They are responsible for most pollination and are
vital for the global circulation of materials and energy through
all the land environments. If insects were to disappear, land
ecosystems would collapse. If humans were to disappear, those
ecosystems would return in a few centuries to near their original
healthy condition.
We blundered into the current crisis by a multitude of small,
largely unconscious actions. These include hunting as many
animals as could be caught, clearing as much land as could
be converted into agricultural fields, drawing as much water
as could be reached, and other survival practices that, on
a short-term basis, have always seemed perfectly logical.
(Discover, December 2001)
But the long-term consequences will be disastrous, is the
warning sounded repeatedly by biologists and others. We can
benefit more by conservation than by exploitation. The fact
is that the natural world can get on without man, but man cannot
get on without the natural world.
Wilson wrote many years age:
Insects and other small creatures deserve far more admiration
and protection than they get. An ant, worm, or snail is more
complicated than any machine devised by man, having been engineered
autonomously during millions of years of evolution to survive
in environments that are hellish by our standards. Each contains
enough genetic information to fill many sets of encyclopedias.
Invertebrates are part of our national heritage. If driven
to extinction, they could never be replaced. Instead, we should
strive to decipher their biology and age-old history to improve
our own chances of survival. We need the creatures more than
they need us because they, not we, run the world.
Young children who have witnessed episodes of violence are
more likely to miss days of school and get poor grades, researchers
report. This academic performance reflects the emotional toll
violence takes on children. According to Dr. Hallam Hart of
the Albert Einstein Medical Centre in Philadelphia, U.S.A.,
children with higher exposure to violence exhibit more depression
and anxiety than children with lower exposure.
The study revealed that, overall, many young children had witnessed
a significant amount of violence. Many showed signs of depression,
anxiety and low self-esteem. For example, 32 per cent of the
children said that they were afraid something bad would happen
if they went outside to play, while 61 per cent worried they
could get killed or die. One fifth of the children said that
sometimes they wished they were dead. And the higher the children's
exposure to violence, the greater the effect on their well-being.
(The Sunday Times, January 20)
Children are the most vulnerable members of society. The responsibility
of adults towards them is great indeed.
MAN is not made for justice from his fellow, but for love,
which is greater than justice, and by including supersedes
justice, Mere justice is an impossibility, a fiction of analysis….Justice
to be justice must be much more than justice. Love is the
law of our condition, without which we can no more render
justice than a man can keep a straight line, walking in the
dark.
-GEORGE MACDONALD
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