Keith Hudson wrote:
738. The most profitable consumer goods yet
Both English and South Korean research teams have announced
breakthroughs in the cloning of human cells. The South Korean team --
a little ahead of the team from Newcastle University -- have succeeded
in producing stem cells with identical genes to those of their
original hosts in 9 out of 11 cases.
In due course, genetic scientists will no doubt be able to "encourage"
these stem cells into producing unrejectable specialised organs for
the human body for replacement purposes -- nerves, lungs, hearts,
kidneys, livers, parts of the brain and so on. When this happens, then
they will be the most profitable consumer products ever devised.
Economically, such a technology will be even more explosive than the
development of the lateen sail by which European merchants could
travel across oceans to south-east Asia in the 17th century to bring
back highly profitable spices which helped to stimulate the economy of
Western Europe and brought it out of Medievalism and the power of the
Church.
Pressure is mounting in the US Congress for Bush to change his
resistance to Federal support for stem cell research.
[snip]
Bush's [well, I'll provide a quote from Heraclitus about this below]
about stem-cell
research is kind of amazing (does that mean it is a cause for
philosophizing, since
philosophy begins in wonder [thaumazein(sp?)]?)
Bush is mouthing off that he won't permit destruction of life to help
save life.
The obvious question here, of course, then, is why the ---- [supply
4-letter word
beginning with {f,s,h}] is he destroying life in Iraq to save life?
I was also thinking more about "family values" today. They seem to
come in two flavors: (1) Helping families flourish, e.g., with
government subsidized
day-care and good head-start programs, etc., and (2) preventing abortions
by married women whose contraception fails or who find they have
deformed foeti....
Now to fill in the blank from my first sentence:
Waking men share a world in common,
But the dreamer turns to a reality unique to himself.
(--Heraclitus)
Bush seems way off in his Bushido-la-la-land -- a place where
even Nancy Reagan's pleas to do research to try to
help find a cure for alzheimer's disease do not register.
If it wasn't for the line of succession, one could understand
someone lamenting that that hand-grenade malfunctioned in Georgia --
damned Soviet forced-labor state industries that only produced junk!
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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