Eggsploitation: A Documentary Film by the CBC

This week, Eggsploitation – a documentary I’ve been working on for several months – is meeting its release date. I co-wrote the film with Jennifer Lahl, my friend and National Director of the CBC. I also managed production and designed all the artwork and animation. This was a quite wonderful learning experience.

Visit the website! See the film! And for heaven’s sake, do not donate your eggs.

Another notch in the single-tasker’s belt

(I realized this morning that many of my own words, on this blog at least, are reactions to the words and thoughts of others. No man is an island.)

From “Ear Plugs to Lasers: The Science of Concentration” was in the NYT today. This was a very interesting article to me, for a few reasons.

1. This is more support for a lifestyle of single-tasking.

2. The problem is clearly defined, and requires little external evidence; everyone feels unproductive in this fast-paced world of progress and production. Everyone. Problem defined: we can’t pay attenti… hmm. I’m hungry. I need to pay some bills too. And get gas. No not that kind of gas, got plenty of that. I need to finish my Lewis lecture, and get immunizations, and… oh, blog.

3. The article comes so close to suggesting what I think is the only solution: clear your life; change your attitude toward things; reevaluate; reset; develop the virtue of contemplation (thinking long and lovingly about X); have a disposition of focus; today’s troubles are enough; the moment’s troubles are enough.

4. But it doesn’t suggest that. It shouts out to “meditation” but other than that, expects that technology (externalities) are able to fix us, without a meaningful change from within. Put in ear plugs; attach “a frikkin’ laserbeam to your head” to neurologically change your brain to pay attention. I wish I was kidding, but this is how twacked we’ve gotten. That’s transhumanism – this device would take us one step closer to merging into an unholy chimera of man and machine. Just wait for the suggestion of an implant.

5. Cool shout outs to William James and Milton, but I’m not sure if the context works to apply their thoughts. (I’ve never read either of those quotes though…)

6. I am (regardless of my blogbashings) supremely guilty of multi-tasking. But when I can sit and focus for a large block of time (the book/article suggests 90 minutes, but I’m thinking more like 2-4 hours) on the top priorities of my professional, vocational life… Oh! The happy state! I feel whole. I feel united.

Theoretical notch or not, this doesn’t change the fact that we are a culture of divided individuals. Say what you will about “connection” or “unity” with others… we need wholeness and unity within ourselves. (And something tells me that the two are more intimately related than I already think.)

Alas! Modernity! Part 2 of 2 (The Poem)

Aye! Modernity! Realize what no machine could do: feel the rebuke, know the shame! How does mythopoeia translate to zeros and ones?

And the Guide sang:

Iron will eat the world’s old beauty up.
Girder and grid and gantry will arise,
Iron forest of engines will arise,
Criss-cross of iron crotchet. For your eyes
No green or growth. Over all, the skies
Scribbled from end to end with boasts and lies.
(When Adam ate the irrevocable apple, Thou
Saw’st beyond death the resurrection of the dead.)

Clamour shall clean put out the voice of wisdom,
The printing-presses with their clapping wings,
Fouling your nourishment. Harpy wings,
Filling your minds all day with foolish things,
Will tame the eagle Thought: till she sings
Parrot-like in her cage to please dark kings.
(When Israel descended into Egypt, Thou
Dist purpose both the bondage and the coming out._

Tis new age, the new art, the new ethic and thought,
And fools crying, Because it has begun
It will continue as it has begun!
The wheel runs fast, therefore the wheel will run
Faster for ever. The old age is done,
We have new lights and see without the sun.
(Though they lay flat the mountains and dry up the sea,
Wilt thou yet change, as though God were a god?)

C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress, Book X, Chapter vi; On the denaturalization of the earth, the dethroning of wisdom, and the love of uninhibited progress – with an eye to redeeming purpose beyond the toil

Alas! Modernity! Part 1 of 2 (The Prose)

Oh, blessed and damned Machine Age! Hearken! You’ve heard of your futility before. I merely – pray not vainly – repeat:

‘There must be a good side somewhere to this revolution,’ said Vertue. ‘It is too solid – it looks to lasting – to be a mere evil…”

The Guide laughed. ‘You are falling into their own error,’ he said. ‘The change is not radical, nor will it be permanent. That idea depends on a curious disease which they have all caught – an inability to disbelieve advertisements. To be sure, if the machines did what they promised, the change would be very deep indeed. There next war, for example, would change the state of their country from disease to death. They are afraid of this themselves – though most of them are old enough to know by experience that a gun is no more likely than a toothpaste or a cosmetic to do the things its makers say it will do.

‘It is the same with all their machines. Their labor-saving devices multiply drudgery; their aphrodisiacs make them impotent: their amusements bore them: their rapid production of food leaves half of them starving, and their devices for saving them have banished leisure from their country. There will be no radical change.

‘And as for permanence – consider how quickly all machines are broken and obliterated. The black solitudes will some day be green again, and of all cities that I have seen these iron cities will break most suddenly.’

C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress, Book X, Chapter vi; On the futile shift from classical to scientific education

Tasty, iddn’t it? Part 2 coming soon.

‘Being dead’ is so last season!

Exactly.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Dear Reader, dear,
I’m hearing some stuff about the end of the university, or, maybe it’s the beginning… ? Well, I don’t want either. And I’m just starting up again, so give me a break! (If I haven’t told you yet, we decided, and we’re both enrolling in Talbot’s Philosophy of Religion and Ethics MA program.)

I’m talkin’ about stuff like this and this. I’m sure there’s more of it, too. We now live among a culture and people which, in this era, LOVE to pronounce the death and end of things. ‘God is dead!’ ‘Blogging is dead!’ ‘Eating food is dead!’ ‘Sleeping is so last season!’ I think this is reflective of the temptation of immediacy – to pick up and speed along. Maybe there’s even some “chronological snobbery” built into that (this “snobbery” is a term of C.S. Lewis, borrowed from fellow Inkling, Owen Barfield).

But the concerns about humanities departments (philosophy, religion, theology, english, etc.) “dying” don’t worry me. I’m not worried about going back to school. In fact, I’m more sure about this than LOTS of other decisions in my 26-year life. I’ll continue to pursue a patient spiritual, intellectual, social and academic lifestyle; and the foundation for this patience is the inherent value of thinking and contemplating (v. “to think long and lovingly” – thanks Dave Evans for that) about the world and everything, physical and non-, in it.

If there is any worry for anyone at all, the source must be the reigning (and thoroughly unwelcome, I say) pragmatism of all generations. Earlier in my life I would have said that cultural pragmatism (the kind that suggests going to college merely for a job, to make money) is a generational thing. Silly baby-boomers. But I’m starting to think it’s not generational. Worry comes in all shapes and sizes and ages and so does the pragmatism that dons the crown deep below the surface of that worry.

So I’m rebelling. I’m going to actually enjoy grad school, and I’m going to enjoy the debt we shall incur and the job scarcity and low salaries that follow from a life of academics. I’m hoping to learn a little more about the Classic, undying value for the intellectual life of mind, heart and soul, and what that means for the details of my life.

It’s gotta be a media thing – ironically enough, since ‘News is dead!” is not an uncommon hidden meaning in headlines these days. In fact, how’s “News is old!” for the next NYT headline? Double irony!!

So, media giants! you soothsayers of cultural fate! Will anything else be dead tomorrow? Pragmatists! you worrisome lot! Is anything else regrettably last season?

More importantly, and for the rest of us, is anything alive today? is anything eternal today?

Stem Cells: A Month Later, An Update

So, to update. More of my thoughts have been published by the CBC via their weekly e-newsletter. Check out part 1 and part 2 via the CBC.

But there’s more already! The NIH (National Institutes of Health – the organization behind the regulation and funding of U.S. federal scientific research) has published draft guidelines for ongoing stem cell research. This is their response to Obama’s commission back in March. These are only draft guidelines, so we’ve yet to see how the final draft will look, but…

Here they are.

I’m happy. All things considered, there appear to be significantly strong guides and boundaries for exactly what sort of stem cells may be used in therapeutic experiments.

Big Idea #1

Most importantly: Embryos created solely for the purpose of being destroyed in research is still out-of-bounds (this is the work of the “Dickey Wicker” if any of you are familiar with the unfortunate name, but not the actual work of the amendment).

Now, there will be backlash on this. There already is. Stanford researchers, Colorado representatives and Hollywood actors all hate this. This is a major disappointment for them. Simply proof that they are not willing to reach across divides and find ethically defensible means of doing therapeutic research with stem cells (adult, cord blood, induced pluripotent stem cells).

And we can expect the complaining to continue. Jennifer Lahl, national director of the CBC, mentioned to me yesterday at lunch that the pool made available by these guidelines still leaves researchers vying and competing for precious raw material to experiment on. That’s why they want to create them on their own (through human cloning – also known as somatic cell nuclear transfer – SCNT).

All the complaining, in the midst of getting a bunch more government money, just heightens my disgust that they want to take life into their own hands.

Big Idea #2
And that’s the not-surprising bad news. There is now more federal funding available for embryo-destructive research, and more lines of stem cells available to destroy. But! the silver lining: In order for researchers to obtain these embryos they need permission based on informed consent from the parents of the embryo.

I remember, these embryos are the leftovers from fertility treatments like in vitro fertilization (IVF). So, think of the 2nd through 8th octuplets. In a normal (whatever that means) IVF treatment, only one embryo is implanted and brought to pregnancy. The other embryos (created just to “make sure” that the customer gets the goods she’s purchasing) are not ever implanted. They just get frozen, and some are thawed for research. Others die in the thawing process.

(This should highlight some serious problems with IVF. It’s not as easy as, “they help infertile couples have babies” – there are very small members of the human community involved here, and their existence demands our respect.)

But now, the parents (the patrons of the fertility treatment) will have a say as to how their non-implanted embryos – their CHILDREN – will spend the rest of their lives.

The positive side of silver lining: Instead of the doctors and researchers and their wallets and budgets deciding the fate of the child, the choice is in the hands of parents.
The negative side of silver lining: The fate of the child – the choice for their life or death – the vocation of their existence! – is in the hands of the parents!

And so now, this should be worrisome to you, dear reader. We’re hardly even talking about the NIH guidelines anymore, but I’ll end with this. The stem cell debate may have more to do with issues of the family than we previously ever thought. Scientific and moral and political and cultural things may be more connected and interdependent than we thought.

But remember, these are just draft guidelines – we’ll see what’s in the final. Will Marty McFly get his way? (Oprah’s Doc says no.)

All too Familiar: That Hideous Strength and the Abolition of Man

How nice a literary connection to all this political talk.

The N.I.C.E. is Great Britain’s National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments, from the mind of C.S. Lewis in the conclusion of his Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength (THS).

“The N.I.C.E. was the first-fruits of that constructive fusion between the state and the laboratory, on which so many thoughtful people base there hopes of a better world. It was to be free from almost all the tiresome restraints – “red tape” was the word its supporters used – which have hitherto hampered research in this country.” – THS, p. 23

As the drama unfolds, the N.I.C.E. proves to be the furthest thing from its acronym’s meaning, marked by media deception, violence and ulterior motives – bent on progress and control – and all nicely stated in the euphemism of “benefit to humankind.” This is starting to sound kinda familiar.

As I re-read this description today, I realize how visionary Lewis actually was. Inasmuch as That Hideous Strength is a literary allusion to his Abolition of Man (TAoM), his story is all too prophetic. As the Italian scientist Filostrato remarks to the misguided Mark Studdock regarding the philosophical underpinnings of the N.I.C.E. and the modern scientific community,

“All that talk about the power of Man over Nature-Man in the abstract-is only for the canaglia [Italian for "scoundrel"]. You know as well as I do that Man’s power over Nature means the power of some men over other men with Nature as the instrument.” – THS, p. 178

And from The Abolition of Man:

“‘Man’s conquest of Nature’ is an expression often used to describe the progress of applied science (p. 53)… In what sense is Man the possessor of increasing power over Nature?… From this point of view, what we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument (p. 54-55)… Man’s conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, mean the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men (p. 58)… For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please (p. 59).”

And:

“But the man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please (p. 60)… Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man (p. 64).”

And are the conditioners – the omnicompetent and scientific, the powerful and political – exempt from this abolition? No:

“Nature, untrammeled by values, rules the Conditioners and, through them, all humanity. Man’s conquest of Nature turns out… to be Nature’s conquest of Man (p. 68)… As soon as we take the final step of reducing our species to the level of mere Nature, the whole process is stultified, for this time the being who stood to gain and the being who has been sacrificed are one and the same (p. 71)… It is in Man’s power to treat himself as a mere ‘natural object’ and his own judgements of value as raw material for scientific manipulation to alter at will (p. 72)… Man’s conquest of himself means simply the rule of the Conditioners over the conditioned human material, the world of post-humanity which, some knowingly and some unknowingly, nearly all men in all nations are at present labouring to produce (p. 75).”

He wrote TAoM in 1944, during the writing of THS. And it applies today, March 9, 2009, in a worrisome way.

Have we a situation in which Nature is untrammeled by values? One in which ethics and the best of virtuous philosophy and theology no longer have any guiding hand or sway or influence over science? One in which we’ve reduced ourselves to mere Nature and raw material? I hope not. For I value the truly human.

But what would a “truly human” situation look like? One in which we acknowledge the personhood of the other, and rightly distinguish them from material to be manipulated. One in which we speak as “I” to “Thou” and not merely as “I” to “It” (nod to Martin Buber).

“The regenerate science which I have in mind would not do even to minerals and vegetables what modern science threatens to do to man himself. When it explained it would not explain away. When if spoke of the parts it would remember the whole. While studying the It it would not lose… the Thou-situation (p. 79).”

I fear in all this talk of the parts (stem cells), we have, in fact, forgotten the whole (the human… the embryo).

Stem Cells: And So It Begins

I’ve been eager to see what actually came of Obama’s executive order and memo. I’d like to round off my previous three posts about this stuff with some more general comments.

(BTW – this guy‘s actually talking about nature of the embryo, which is way cool! He also gets into IVF issues – which is too much to chew for now.)

I shall start thusly: I do not like false dichotomies. I believe they are dangerous to humanity. (E.g. faith vs. reason, public vs. private, sacred vs. secular, etc.)

“It has often been said, and certainly not without justification, that the man of science is a poor philosopher.” – Albert Einstein, “Physics and Reality” (1936) [Okay, it's slightly out of context... look it up.]

Summaries of Today’s Executive Action
Order: “Yay stem cell research; we need more of it; remove limits [i.e. restrictions of federal funds and limited number of researchable embryonic stem cell lines] on “scientific inquiry” for the “benefit of humankind; human embryonic stem cell research (hESCR) is AOK within the law; guidance left to National Institutes of Health (NIH) to figure out – due in 120 days; Bush’s restrictions/limits officially revoked.”

Memo: “America relies on science and its progress to help form policy; the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy has 120 days to figure out how to “guarantee scientific integrity throughout the executive branch” and share that with the Prez.”

Thoughts About the Order
I’ve said my piece before, but I want to reiterate the need for understanding what an embryo is. Greg Koukl wittingly points out that the answer to the question “Can I kill it?” depends on another bit of information… “WHAT is it?”

This order will change some things. Granted, it’s not entirely clear what the NIH will come out with in four months, but it seems safe to predict that:

Federal funds (lots more than the hundreds of millions already provided) will be doled out to researchers working on human embryos. Think about this figure: a piece of $10 billion over two years… granted to the NIH as part of the stimulus package.

Frozen embryo lines (that were created at fertility clinics or elsewhere after August 9, 2001) will now be available to scientists to “study” (when EVER did “studying” imply destruction? Only evil circumstances.)

Now, for the cloning comment today.
Obama brought up cloning (proving that stem cell issues at least beg the cloning question), admitting his belief that in it’s reproductive form, it is dangerous and wrong. But please note that cloning already exists. It’s called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). If “new lines of embryos are created” it will be by this process, which takes a bodily cell from an adult human, and injects it into the nucleus of a human egg, tricking the egg to think the somatic cell is sperm. At that point the egg is fertilized – you’ve got a clone. It’s an embryonic clone, but it’s still a clone.

Now, it’s good to know the Prez doesn’t like reproductive cloning, but he didn’t mention therapeutic cloning (SCNT for the purposes of making more embryos to study and break to pieces for their pluripotent cells). And he doesn’t seem to have a problem with that.

But what would the difference be? It brings us back to THE NATURE OF THE EMBRYO… again. If human life starts at fertilization (nod to the National Academy of Sciences), you’ve got a human clone whether it’s for therapeutic research (the clone is born to die) or for reproduction (the clone is born to live). Now, I am entirely against cloning, but certainly a live clone is better than a dead clone, right? And either way – whether therapeutic or reproductive, there is an issue with commodifying human life. The reproductive clone is a commodity: it is a synthesized, purchased human life. The therapeutic clone is also a commodity as well: it is also a synthesized, purchased human life. The difference lay only in the use. One’s purpose for living is satisfying an infertile couple with a child, the other’s fate is disassembly and then injection into the spine or heart or brain of an afflicted consumer.

So, Prez, do you hate therapeutic cloning just as much. Please say yes.

All in all, this is just the beginning of a four-month to four-year to God-knows-how-long drama over the lives and fate of the youngest and most vulnerable of our human community: the embryo.

Thoughts About the Memo
Now this is quite possibly more far-reaching than the Order today, simply because it’s about a reformulation of “scientific integrity” in politics. I’m a little iffy about this, and will obviously need to know more, and of course it depends on what shape the executive recommendations end up taking. Suffice it for now to say, there was NO MENTION of ethics in the Memo (though plllenty of musings in the press and the Prez’s comments about today’s actions).

I’m all for restoring integrity to science. But matters of integrity are ethical matters. I hope some of the guidelines help to foster more open dialogue and better communication and connecting and integrating of ethics with science. But the Barack himself railed against a “false choice” between science and morality… as his REASON for lifting the restrictions. No, it’s not one or the other, but the Bush restrictions came much closer to “neutral” than Obama’s “emancipation” – he’s already chosen a side: science.

I’m reeeeeeally hoping that the President’s Council on Bioethics remains in tact. They should be working intimately with the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the NIH. Lord have mercy.

Issues I’m Still Researching and Still Thinking About
There are are few unknowns for me still (I am, after all – GASP! – cognitively limited, which I am joyfully struggling to accept). Some you, my dear reader, might be able to correct, which I invite, and some I think require closer philosophical consideration:

Will new lines of embryos now be created (i.e., for the sole purpose of being destroyed in research/therapy)? Did the lift allow for that?

How authoritative and far-reaching will the NIH guidelines be? What is their potential to enact ethical restrictions/limits?

There’s a lot of “the embryos will be destroyed anyway” talk; is this really a legitimate justification for then destroying them?

When Obama and his cabinet (and the media and bloggers and such) refer to “political influence” do they also mean “ethical influence”? This is a nagging question about the nature and efficacy of politics to allow different disciplines to engage (e.g., ethics and science).

A litany of other questions and issues about integrating ethics and science and policy and philosophy and theology and blogging and neck-beards (my latest craze).

Ultimately, my position on how to conduct stem cell public policy will depend on (in a sort of supplementary way) the answers to these questions, as well as my grounding belief on the matter: that “caring for each other and easing human suffering” (Obama’s words) demands that no human should ever be abused as a means to such care or ease of suffering. If embryos count as human life, then we need to care for them and ease their suffering.

The Wonderful Paradox of It All
And paradoxically, I’ve dedicated my life to One who did just such a thing. He certainly was abused as a means to great ends. And was so voluntarily, by His own design.

Religion, Humanities and their Utility

Two recent articles caught my eye.

In one, Stanley Fish (NYT contributor) comments on the decline of the humanities (philosophy, English, literature, poetry, and the like) in the contemporary university culture. More and more people seem to consider a college education a mere 4-year waiting period for a diploma and the right to say “I graduated from here!” to a would-be employer.

In the other, Matthew Parris (Times Online columnist), an atheist, theorizes that the best thing for Africa would be more Christian missionaries. He sees a cultural passivity in Africans that he thinks (1) is causing Africa’s problems and (2) can be solved by evangelical Christian faith. In short, it’s the individualism that he likes about this faith, because it would “liberate” the people from seeing themselves as subordinate to others, which, he thinks, will lead to change for the better.

What I’m so interested in is that both of these articles are about the usefulness, or utility, of worldviews (or the study of those sorts of things).

The utility principle can be construed in several different ways, but a common one looks like this:

The right (or moral, or ethical) thing to do is that which produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

I think the key word (or the one that’s popping out to me right now) is “produces.” Useful things are productive; they make stuff that you can see and touch and feel. And the modern world is very familiar with production. The purpose of control exhibited by the modern world is to create utility (usefulness) to mankind. Now obviously, what you consider “useful” depends on your worldview.

My Point
How do we measure the utility of religion? How would we quantify the productivity of poetry or philosophy? The problem with this mindset is that it consumes non-quantifiable things into the quantifiable. A utilitarian worldview has to find a way to deal with other competing worldviews, and here it seems like the modern university is simply heading toward elimination of the humanities (if too drastic, the slope is heading downward at the very least – college should get you a job, right!?); and Parris’ atheism contracts Christianity to do some good work for Africa, not because God actually does exist, or because He offers truth, or because it’s an intrinsic good to worship Him.

Nope – I’m not a utilitarian. I think utility should always bow to the good and virtuous (e.g. killing an innocent person to appease an angry mob is wrong); and that utility can somehow play a redeeming role in the evil and vicious (e.g. lying to protect Jews in Nazi Germany; Christ’s atoning death to save countless others).

Getting a job tyrannizes lots of college students. Pity that we don’t value the pursuit of knowledge and a thoughtful mind for their own sake. And religion can be useful, but that’s not the point. Don’t be a Christian to escape hell, or to liberate Africa. Everyone should be a Christian because it’s good to fear and worship God and to believe true things about him.

Final thought on Parris’ idea: This bothers me even more than the humanities dying off for utility’s sake. African’s should become Christians to they can throw off their oppressors, liberate themselves, take things into their own hands, establish themselves as individuals, subordinate to no one. This sort of technical and rational control is exactly opposite to Christianity. The Christian certainly is a responsible individual, but can only exist as subordinate to God and others – that’s how we fulfill the first and second commandments. And the search for control is a fool’s errand; a myth astray, even. Parris seems to be conceding a major point to Christianity here, but I think (and I don’t want to be too too sure about this, but I’m willing to argue it here) he is giving a penny and taking a dollar. Or maybe he is just confused as to how it produces the good it does.

Christianity is good in and of itself, and that’s why it merits the world’s attention. Not so it can serve the modern agenda (or any human agenda for that matter).