Nuclear Reprogramming of Somatic Cells and theology
What the fallacious comparison of Hitler having used his so-called atheistic ideas for the justification of Jewish Genocides? What the belief that Mao Ze-Dong used supposedly enlightened ideas to let the rich experience the poor, only to result in societal discontent and chaos? Why these when God has brought so much more suffering and death by the very creation of mankind in the billions if not zillions? Now, as even the question of how precious life really is, there was the problem with Stem Cell research. That is, research that could lift the paralyzed out of their wheelchairs and let the blind see once again, and that which is so passionately fought against by the Bush administration itself and all those who are theological fundamentalists. The moral issue with stem-cell research seems to have been solved with new advances in genetics, but raises another with exponential importance for those who are concerned about how precious which ‘life’ may be.
Previously, the problem with stem cells was that if one did not keep their primary source of stem cells, the placenta, another embryo had to be formed so that stem cells could be retrieved from it. After that, the embryo is to be destroyed. And in doing so, theologians are worried that this may just be a case of murder of potential human life – lives that were personally designed by God. Although skeptics have many a time raised the question of which theologians prefer better – the human being who has a nervous system that has emotions and has developed an intelligent brain, rather than an undifferentiated group of cells that has no capacity to think or feel – such will not be discussed here as it is not a primary concern of this paper.
Now, researchers have documented scientific reports and articles [see footnotes] detailing the possibilities of using somatic cells (cells other than those specialized to be used for reproductive purposes – also known as germ cells) to create organs and other various parts by having them nuclear-reprogrammed to retreat back to its stem cell stage. This seemed to have avoided the hypothetical issue of a cell having been specially designed by God. Yet, it is not so.
Imagine that if every cell on your body could potentially become a stem cell, and that this cell can theoretically divide and differentiate to form a new individual, than the problem of murder only gets that much larger. How much you ask? Fact: place a dot with your pencil on a piece of paper, and the area covered by that dot, on your finger, is equivalent to a hundreds cells, meaning that your body has trillions of cells. So, if you pick your nose, and a piece of skin falls off with it – so small that it is scarcely seen by the naked eye – and you flink it into the toilet bowl, you would have killed hundreds of potential human lives! Please do not forget that we also walk around – some skin gets torn away – eat every day – the acid of the food kills the top cells that line the esophagus – and move our tongue to talk – cells are severely damaged and killed due to acids coming from the food. In a mere 10 seconds of going about your daily routine, you would have destroyed at least 200 potential human lives! And in one day, you would have killed 1,728,000 potential human lives, and 630,720,000 potential human lives in one year! And if you live to at least seventy years old, you would have murdered 44,150,400,000 potential human lives! In one generation alone, the current human population alone would have destroyed 264,902,400,000,000,000,000 potential human lives! Let me not count how many humans have already killed in the 21st century, for the number is excruciating, for it kills a total that supersedes the addition of the number of organisms God has killed for humans to rise, the amount of Jews who were killed mercilessly under Hitler’s rule, and the number of people who suffered and died under the beliefs of Mao Ze-Dong. Indeed, if we humans were made in God’s image, it would be that humans have an ability to take life as God too does whenever he so pleases.
The fact is, the lost of all these cells, these having the potential to have life, are necessary in the daily living of ANY organism. If theologians wish to inhibit research regarding somatic-nuclear-reprogramming, maybe they should tell their own sheep to stop eating, walking, talking, or any other activity that organisms do because they have life. What absurdity! Yet despite the inherent discrepancy of what type of ‘life’ is truly more precious, they nevertheless think their theological beliefs are so much sounder. Here stands the trial of religion’s insanity in how it determines what kind of life is more precious, and the craziness they stand for in proclaiming what is knowingly utterly outrageous.
Footnotes
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