15 December, 2006

Science News: Virgin Births Lead to Transplantable Stem Cells

Nothing in particular to say. It was just a really, really wierd headline. You know, it's not like virgin births happen every day, so to hear that they lead to transplantable stem cells was oddly disturbing.

I can kind of see where they're coming from, of course, since it was Christ's coming that made it possible for as many of us as believed to become the children of God. It's like a divine stem cell is ingrafted into us. They must be amazed that it was only by one of the (thousands of?) virgin births that salvation was ever made possible. It's just odd that they think it newsworthy that all those other virgins are popping out kids, when they're not even microscopically remotely close to being of comparable worth to the triumph of the Lamb.

I for one am glad I barely wasted the time to skim the whole article, which is actually something about cloning female eggs without fertilizing them. (Maybe they don't really believe in virgin births?) They fail to point out that this is a good idea, because if there is no male human involved at any point in the process, the religious right won't feel bad about killing the living being that results. After all, we didn't mind when the first virgin birth experiment ended in a death for the good of others, right?

I'm pretty sure they think we who bother ourselves with the ethics of embryonic stem cell research will be glad to see these virgin-born non-humans sacrificed for others, because they are not even called zygotes. They're called Parthenotes, which is much less human-sounding. The new word even sounds like scientists should be dinking around with parthenotes, if only to see what god-like works might be possible on them.

The article ends on an unexpectedly ominous note, One possible hitch: Parthenotes might not grow properly, because they lack important contributions from male genes.

Nah. There's nothing to worry about. We can make ourselves stronger, faster, smarter than we were before.

The last words spoken on earth might be, "Hey, look what we invented. You just push this button, and ...."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

When it all comes apart I know deep in my heart that we won’t be here we’ll be sitting in Heaven rejoicing. So let them push away.