Stem cell research probably has the most potential of any medical investigation to date. Apart from already having made significant scientific breakthroughs such as bone marrow transplants and cloning, stem cell researchers assert that it will change the way we treat a whole host of degenerative diseases including cancer and Parkinson’s disease, and will even allow us to repair spinal cord injuries. But the first step in achieving these breakthroughs is the capacity to influence the growth of pluripotent stem cells. It is here that some might need a brief lesson on how stem cells work – don’t worry, you won’t need a degree in biology to understand.

Stem cells are found all over your body, throughout your life, and there are two basic types of stem cells:
- Tissue specific stem cells – cells specific to a particular adult tissue in your body. These cells can therefore yield cells only of that particular tissue, they are called multipotent stem cells.
- Pluripotent stem cells – stem cells that haven’t yet begun specialising, or becoming a particular adult tissue. These cells have the potential to be any type of cell in the body, and because of this trait, are the core of stem cell research (SCR).

But there is one problem regarding pluripotent cells. Until recently the only way to obtain them was via human embryos. The cells of human embryos were the perfect source of un-specialised cells, but they came with some obvious ethical concerns. Is it ok to kill living cells that could one day become human? There are a few arguments that I would like to explore in order to find our answer.

The first usually goes along the lines of the ‘sanctity of life’ – “these cells are living beings that deserve to live as any other living creature on the planet” –  this argument falls down when we consider the way in which humans treat life in almost every other circumstance. Take the meat industry for example. Not only do we kill these living creatures (who are more ‘alive’ than embryos by any definition you might find), but it could be argued that they are tortured, or at least live in torturous conditions before they are killed – humanely or not. Of course the current state of the meat industry may not be a good example of moral decency (although it is still the norm), and if you don’t support the industry you might think that the sanctity of life is a good argument. But unless you’re a Jain, whose religious doctrines preach the sanctity of life to the extent that its practitioners wouldn't kill a fly, any animal that you can see – including a fly – is a more complex creature than a human embryo. So again, unless you are a Jain that harbours some potentially unreasonable beliefs, then I'm sure you wouldn't object to swatting a fly every now and again. So if we can’t attribute the importance of human embryos to ‘life’, then what other reasons are there?

Is it possible that these human embryos are important, not because they are alive, but because they are human, or at the very least have the potential to become human? The initial argument – embryos should receive special treatment in virtue of being human – doesn't seem to match up with the reality of childbirth. The problem here is that current estimates suggest that 60-80% of fertilized eggs don’t implant, and of the eggs that do, a significant portion spontaneously abort. So even taking the best case scenario into account, more than half of the total population of humans (assuming fertilised eggs are considered human) die before they are born. There are more humans that have never lived than humans who have. And this doesn't seem to trouble anyone. In fact, the knowledge that death at this stage is so natural may even convince some that ‘killing’ embryos for vital scientific gains is acceptable. And even when an embryo is over a week old, if something is not special in virtue of being alive or being human, then it certainly cannot be called special in virtue of having ‘fingernails’, as many anti-abortionists point out in their attempts to humanize the embryos. But how about the potential for being human? Given recent scientific advances, it is possible to create pluripotent stem cells from adult stem cells, i.e. it is possible to create embryonic stem cells from skin (or any other adult stem cell, skin is simply the most used). This means that upon rubbing our hands together in an attempt to warm ourselves we are killing thousands of ‘potential’ humans. Hopefully this is enough to convince you that arguments from the ‘potential human’ corner are invalid.

Although I could end my arguments for embryonic stem cell research here, I would like to point out one thing. If we do not have value in virtue of being alive, being human, or having the potential to be human, then where does our value lie? It can only lie in one place – sentience. The ability to think and feel. The stronger the claim to sentience, the stronger the claim to value. This is also the only value claim upon which one can be morally consistent. The claims that value exists in virtue of being alive is inconsistent with how we treat life in other circumstances. The claim that value exists in virtue of being human is inconsistent with our indifferent response to natural abortion. The claim that value exists in virtue of having the potential to be human is inconsistent with our thoughts about the potential for life in our skin cells. The claim that value exists in virtue of being sentient is consistent with all of these – humans can consider themselves more valuable than other animals, humans can be indifferent to natural abortion, humans can care minimally about the potential for our skin cells to become human. But upon preaching moral consistency in this regard, the idea that sentience is the only true measure of value has its own noteworthy implications.

If sentience is the only true measure of value, which I think it must be, then it follows that those animals that are more sentient than human babies (such as adult monkeys, more specifically chimps, gorillas and orang-utans, among other animals) are more valuable. It also means that should a human lose sentience then he or she loses their value, in such cases as significant brain trauma reducing someone to a vegetative state. That unborn child within us (up to a certain age), and that dear friend who is no longer sentient in hospital, have no value. That is to say if they do have value, it is only the value that others place on them. They have no inherent value in and of themselves.

This conclusion may not be easy to reconcile with, and it doesn't sit well with me either. In fact it is completely counter-intuitive (which I suppose is a good thing considering if it weren't, we would evolutionarily have had no more reason to look after our own child than the neighbour’s dog – and we wouldn't have survived long), but it seems to me to be the only reasonable conclusion. It is well known that human intuition has its limits, fields such as physics have pointed this out over and over again. But today we can afford to remove ourselves from our genetic tendencies, for we did not evolve to be rational, we evolved on the back of a necessity to survive in an inhospitable environment and nothing more. And given that we are lucky enough that a fight for survival is no longer necessary (at least in first world countries), perhaps one day we will be able to break free of some of these limitations placed on us by our genetic dispositions.

In conclusion, the ability to grow organs that your body will not reject (because the organ is grown from your own cells) is something that we cannot sacrifice for the sake of embryos. I could write another whole blog outlining and explaining all the remarkable things that Stem Cell Research might yield, but given that I’ve concluded that human embryos have no value (at least until a certain point in development) it is not necessary. I hope this post sheds a little more light onto the debate, and whether or not I’ve convinced you, we are now virtually able to create embryonic stem cells from adult tissue, so you won’t have anything to worry about in the future anyway!

Religion: helpful, charitable, relaxing, time consuming, war mongering, progress smothering, science strangling, morally inadequate, logically preposterous tyranny. No offense. In fact the first three, should religion truly be any of these, pale in comparison to the combined lunacy of the rest.

For thousands of years religion has existed unchallenged and unchecked by most people all over the world. The good that it does is minimal, the problems that it poses, infinite. Even now it exhibits a stranglehold on Australian government. Having almost completed the reformation of an anti-discrimination law that began in 2009, atheist Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced that religious groups will maintain the right to discriminate against those who might harm “religious sensitivities”. In short, Gillard has given religious organisations the right to victimise homosexuals and women, the former having already been ill-treated in regards to her stance on gay-marriage. Is this the society we live in? Does a stone-age morality still hold sway in 2013?

Many of us know the problems the world faces regarding religious extremism, so I’m not going to go into too much detail on the matter. Who can ignore the martyrs of the Muslim world blowing themselves up, killing “infidels” in the process, in order to secure a place for themselves and their family in heaven? And yet, religion is still widely accepted as a positive force in the world. Even atheists and agnostics often maintain that religion should be allowed to exist if it keeps to itself.

And to an extent I could agree with this ideology. But on the other hand I know that there is no such thing as a world in which religion could keep to itself. I know there is no such thing as a world in which religion couldn’t be affecting me negatively. Not only does religion affect Federal decision making in many first world countries, it's propensity to create war amongst its people is undeniable, and this to me is a very concerning topic, especially in an age of nuclear power. I can already hear many of you saying "but that's not me, that's the muslim extremists!". And I’m sorry to say that in this particular instance, you’re wrong.

Religious moderation is considered by some to be a "new age" religion. People in this category understand the problems that their holy books have in describing the reality in which they live, and make up for that fact by choosing to take some of what it says as metaphors, or perhaps a simplification of facts to make things such as the creation of the universe user friendly. Either that or they have come to the realisation that their book lacks relevant contextual information, allowing them to have a moral check for out-dated practices. This is much better than extremism. Believing that the earth is between six and ten-thousand years old is beyond illogical given what we know today. But while this is the case, we should not for a second think that moderates are without problems of their own. 

The main problem they pose is their reaction to secular discussion regarding their views. Only the other day while calling trivia at work I brought up the fact that the "virginity" of Mary was not only spoken about once in the entirety of the bible, but that it is also a mistranslation from the Hebrew word almah, which literally means young woman, to the Greek word parthenos, or virgin. Of course the reactions I received were mixed to say the least. But mixed to the affect that I actually had to feign ignorance on the subject and change the topic rather quickly. The only reason I didn't attempt to reason with them is the unprofessional situation such a discussion (that would have inevitably become heated) would have landed me in as trivia master. 

As if I needed any more evidence for this, it is clear that religious moderates make criticising religion taboo. Their desire for "respect" pushes critical thinking out the door in such a way that it prevents people from saying the harsh but necessary things that need saying to, and about, the religious extremists. It also prevents intelligent discourse on the topic, permitting such idiocies as giving religion discriminatory rights as was mentioned before. This "respect" should not be given blindly, it should be earned. There is not a single field of discussion other than religion that is given respect this way. Where else would it be OK to say that you believe people can perform magic? Even if your beliefs happened to be based on a book, let's use Harry Potter as an example, they still wouldn't merit the consideration of an intelligent human being. Let's go a step further and say your beliefs were based on many books, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and so on and so forth, and that some people claimed these reflect reality. There would still not be one person (in their right mind) who would believe you when you claim that a boy named Harry Potter performed magic. How could you when you know that these books were written by people? And yet, it takes only a few books, written many hundreds of years after the fact, to convince us today, that magic can be, and was performed by men such as Jesus or Mohammad.

Religious people might here point out that Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia are written by men, while their doctrine was written by God. But this itself poses a problem, especially for those who consider themselves “moderately religious”. The predicament that most religious moderates face is that they are ignorant regarding much of the Bible.

If you truly believe the Bible is the irrefutable word of God, then how should you react to the following verse:

“18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.” (Deuteronomy 21:18)

Will you stone your children when they are disobedient? It is what your god demands of you. And if you don’t, what is your excuse for disobeying your Him? Many people will, given these circumstances, declare that the bible was written by men, men who are subject to the usual contextual difficulties.

Wait. Written by whom? I thought you just said the Bible was written by God.

The context in which the Bible was written should generate some scepticism regarding its validity. Aside from the fact that the books were written a few hundred years after the stories they describe, I believe there are things that could discredit it even further. Consider the education and intelligence of people in the Middle East at the time. Its people were potentially some of the least educated in the world except for a select few that had the capacity to write. In short, this Dark Age society would have been convinced of “magical” trickery as easily as we could today convince a child. If God wished to impart his divine word upon man why not reincarnate himself in, for example, China – a culture far superior in the fields of education and technology?

Not only can religious moderates not base their view on intellectual consistency, they are also - as Sam Harris puts it - theologically bankrupt. God was not a moderate. If you truly believe that the Bible, the Koran, or any other religious book to be the "word of God" then what right do you have to pick and choose what part of it you wish to believe? If you truly believe your book is the word of god, then by choosing not to believe that you should stone disobedient children to death you are disobeying your god, and in the same breath creating a god that suits you. Isn’t that a sin too?

This is a major problem that religious moderates face. In fact, the gods of these books are far from the gentle, loving gods that most people believe in: Would you worship a god who endorses slavery, even the selling of one's daughter as a slave (Exodus 21:7)? Would you truly condemn a man to death for working on a Sunday (Exodus 35:2)? And if you feel that these parts of the bible are subject to debate then why not the whole book? Do you, as a follower of god, have the right to change what your god has told you of himself? That is what you are changing if you believe the bible is the word of god. Do you truly believe that a god's commands and moral codes are subject to context? It seems to me that it would be foolish to say that an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent being's moral codes should be subject to such human failings.

What is subject to these failings then? Men. Men are subject to such failings. And if you are not convinced by this article that your holy book is the product of man, then I challenge you to read it. From start to finish. 

Some of what I've said in this article might seem offensive or even politically incorrect. But this is precisely my point. It seems this way because religious moderates preach tolerance and respect in such a way as to discourage the blunt and honest truth that demands to be considered by people all over the world. Tolerance of bad ideas is not only insulting to those who hold them, it is also dangerous. And in the kind of world we live in today, it is a danger that we could live without.

BOOKS TO READ:

Sam Harris - End of Faith
Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion
Christopher Hitchens - God is not Great