Tinkering with Life

8.24.06

Stem cells. Embryos. Emergency Contraception. When does life begin? All this discussion about tinkering with blastocysts in order to create new cells, organs, tissue, life saving therapies got me to thinkig about the many ways we manipulate life, through medicine, plastic surgery, psychoanalysis, exercize, nutrition, prayer, music, art, reproduction, death. I've always been fascinated with the Right to Life position that human life begins at conception, but have never had the chance to ask any what they want us sexually active, menstruating women to do with our periods, which, despite the use of contraception, may contain an aborted embryo. If indeed that flow contained a human life, shouldn't we be burying every tampon or sanitary napkin, performing last rites just in case there was a little person-to-be in there? If we go ahead and take a blastomere from an embryo, they now say, we are still destroying life, even though that procedure is thought to be harmless to any ensuing development. According to this theory, then, every cell in our body is "human lifel" and we're sloughing them off like dandruff daily, so wouldn't we need to also accord these dermatological detritus the same honor as the rest of our bodies when they die?

What about our thoughts? Aren't they human as well? And our actions? And our feelings? These are all human but no one seems too concerned when we kill those off through abuse or neglect. What is personhood, when you can alter the body that contains it so easily and when it changes from second to second on its own accord? Who are we really when we put on different masks for different roles in our lives? is the man who puts on a suit to go to work as a civil rights lawyer not the same man who goes home and joins a KKK chatroom? The straightlaced woman who erects a pole in her garage for "fitness?" Why do we get so worked up over a couple of cells here and there when they're removed from an ovary but not when they're blown off a body during war?

We discard mal-formed fetuses, dump unwanted babies, incarcerate neer do wells and fob off our seniors to abusive homes without a second thought, but get all in a lather over animal abuse and environmental protection of some rare toad. Isn't it all life worth protecting? Are we fearful that such tinkering smacks of God like behaviour? So? Who is God, but that which dwells in these all too human bodies anyway. When we murder each other we're murdering God and when we create life in a petri dish we're creating God, so it all would seem to be part of the plan.

If we can see life in every living thing then we either have to preserve it all or leave it all up for grabs. We should probably see God's grace in the non-"living" as well: the diamonds, the plastic wrap, the volcanoes and cathedrals and prions and lava and, heaven forbid, Twinkies. It's all a continuum going back to the big bang, or the divine creation, whichever floats your boat. Anything that improves life for those here, seems to be a good idea and worthier of our time and efforts than those endeavours which continually destroy.