On Spirituality & Technology

How coincidental is this? The week that we talk about stem cells and biomedicine in class, is the week that I come across articles on these topics. Or, maybe it's just that these topics are so prevalent in current events that they're practically unavoidable.

Mahowald's article talks about different uses of cloning, and the third of these is "therapeutic cloning, where the therapy is not intended to produce children". I guess this method can be applied to this article I found in Thursday's Toronto Star (A14) titled "Stem cells ease muscle disease in dogs". The author says that "stem cell injections worked remarkably well at easing muscular dystrophy in a group of golden retrievers". The difference between this article and Mahowald's article is that the Toronto Star article indicates that they used "stem cells taken from the affected dogs or other dogs, rather than from embryos". This article is an ideal example of stem cell research that does not raise the ethical issue of killing embryos. Stem cells retrieved from already living organisms are still effective in alleviating symptoms of the disease.

Right underneath this article was another article titled "Heart valves grown in lab experiment". Here, it's said that "scientists for the first time have grown human heart valves using stem cells from the fluid that cushions babies in the womb". Apparently, they're to be implanted into babies with heart defects after it is born. Again, this article is an example of NOT using embryonic stem cells to aid medical problems. When Mahowald says that "embryonic stem cells ... may provide the only effective therapy for some diseases", she seems to be overlooking medical conditions that could benefit from non-embryonic stem cells.

We also looked at Wolpe's article on genes and Jewish beliefs. On the opposite side of the newspaper where the previous 2 articles came from, is an article about DNA; "Scientists crack Neanderthal DNA". From their research, the scientists say that the Neanderthal species separated from humans 370,000 years ago. This is interesting and these findings seem to evoke as much excitement in researchers as much as finding out what particular DNA account for certain traits in people.

In Wolpe's article, there is a quote that "genes are our our hope for the future; the search for DNA has become not a scientific endeavor but a holy mission, a Quest". Sure, the quest for DNA is rooted in our hopes for the future, but as this Toronto Star article shows, it is also associated with learning more about our past. Its research in the archeological field might not be as practical as its research in biomedicine, but it can still be pretty darn interesting.