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The Forum > General Discussion > To George Pell . Eventually we will have to take control of our genetic destiny.

To George Pell . Eventually we will have to take control of our genetic destiny.

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The human race has achieved so much in science and technology that I fear that intellectually and emotionally we can no longer cope with our new world.George Pell wants to stop stem cell research on ethical grounds,yet he his just fighting the inevitable eventual manipulation of our genetics that will improve our race.

Genetics now is a random and cruel science that throws up a great diversity to cope with possible environmental change and many of now already get the short end of the gene stick and have to suffer a less than optimum life.With careful and regulated science,we can make millions of lives a lot better.

If there be re-incarnation and the body be the vehicle for the soul,wouldn't you want to come back to a better vehicle?
Posted by Arjay, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 6:49:21 PM
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Well, while this conversation seems to be a silent monologue of mutual ageement,there is another important reality to consider.In my parents generation they had many children of which some died because of genetic problems.Today we save children with all manner of genetic problems and preserve them at all cost.Survival of the fittest does not apply.

Saving babies at all cost does not make for a genetically strong society.We either have scientific intervention or suffer devolution.
Posted by Arjay, Friday, 8 June 2007 11:10:02 PM
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It says in the Bible that when God say humanity building the Tower of Babel,he grew fearful that humanity would challenge him & sought to stifle its development.

Genetic Engineering & IT are our new, bigger & better Tower(s) of Babel.And Gods representative have grown fearful -& are trying it on again.

But alas, it will do little to affect the outcome.
The dye has already been cast & some or other stream of humanity will run with it.And It will ultimately take us to the heavens & beyond.

“Come Cardinals and Mullahs
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your parishioners
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changing”
Posted by Horus, Saturday, 9 June 2007 7:51:19 AM
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Its terrible that in the 21st Century Dark age cults still have a voice. Who cares what George Pell thinks. If his followers dont want the beneifits of stem cell research then its their choice.

Pell has demonstrated the immorality of his position. What he proposes is to spread suffering and death because to the game rules of his ignorance based superstition saving life and curing disease is unethical.

Pell and his croneys must go back to the Bible or Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or what ever their hysteria arises from and leave the running of the real world to those who live in the real world.
Posted by West, Monday, 11 June 2007 12:18:55 PM
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The babies you refer to who are born with "genetic" defects are often deformed in some way from exposure to the very chemicals that science has provided for the "benefit" of humans.

Remember the use of chloroform to anaethetise patients? Ah now that was a breakthrough, wasn't it? Except scientists omitted to advise that chloroform is a particularly dangerous carcinogen.

What about all the breakthroughs to eradicate anything that moved - more "scientific" wonders.

Of course, many humans exposed to these silver bullets, particularly pregnant women, developed a "faulty" gene where embryos and their children's children were affected thus creating deformities or genetic malformations and conditions - along with miscarriages and still-births.

I recall the Australian scientific "wonder" of thalidomide for pregnant women, to prevent morning sickness, resulting in deformities in their offspring.

Many of these chemicals, invented by scientists, now remain in the environment, bioaccumulating and impossible to destroy, where they continue to kill off humans.

Cancers have increased along with scientific developments.

I speak not from any religious convictions, however, let's take things easy, proceed with caution, and not get too excited about the offers on hand to cure the defects in humans, many already created by scientific "breakthroughs."

Some science initiatives have been wonderfully beneficial to humans, others horrendous!

Let's get it right on genetic engineering or we will again suffer the consequences of a science gone mad!
Posted by dickie, Monday, 11 June 2007 12:33:52 PM
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It is only arrogrance that allows man to think that the clay can tell the potter how things should be. I am not sure if God is laughing at such fools or crying.
Posted by runner, Monday, 11 June 2007 1:03:24 PM
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dickie, you should hope that you don't get ill, mate. Or if you do, that you leave your luddite tendencies at the hospital gate.

>>The babies you refer to who are born with "genetic" defects are often deformed in some way from exposure to the very chemicals that science has provided<<

"Often". Useful word. What about the ones whose defects have nothing to do with chemicals, dickie? Don't they deserve a community that tries to discover cures?

And how come it is suddenly their own fault that babies are born deformed because of "exposure to the very chemicals that science has provided"? Don't they also deserve a fair go?

>>Remember the use of chloroform to anaethetise patients?...Except scientists omitted to advise that chloroform is a particularly dangerous carcinogen. <<

Remember also the many lives it saved during the sixty-odd years it was in use. Not to mention the fact that it was only in the 1990s that it was labelled "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen", not even in your "particularly dangerous" category.

>>Cancers have increased along with scientific developments<<

As has human longevity. Your point is... what?

>>Some science initiatives have been wonderfully beneficial to humans, others horrendous!<<

Some leaders have been wonderfully beneficial to their citizens, others horrendous. What would you prescribe to ensure we only are led by the good guys and avoid the bad eggs? How would you also apply this to medicine?

Your exhortation to "take things easy, proceed with caution, and not get too excited about the offers on hand" sounds like the words of a smug, holier-than-thou individual with a belief in their own immortality.

But I'm sure you are not really like that, are you?
Posted by Pericles, Monday, 11 June 2007 2:12:25 PM
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No Pericles....I'm "not really like that" but simply a little better informed than you.

Chloroform is a proven carcinogen in animals, causing liver and kidney cancer, nervous system and cardiac conditions and is fetotoxic.

The fact that scientists endorsed the continuing use of chloroform for over 100 years before confirming its toxicicity to humans, animals and the environment, is of some concern.

In addition, due to the lack of extensive research on the hazards of chloroform it is still classified as a "probable" carcinogen to humans though it is confirmed that exposure can cause brain, digestive, eye, kidney, liver and skin diseases, hence my description as " "particularly dangerous."

Clearly you didn't know the chemical name for chloroform which happens to be trichloromethane. This may have prevented you from shooting off your mouth and attacking the messenger.

The remainder of your post lacks any substance and is not worth responding to.
Posted by dickie, Monday, 11 June 2007 3:56:56 PM
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The insinuation in your post, dickie, is that "they should have known".

>>Remember the use of chloroform to anaethetise patients? Ah now that was a breakthrough, wasn't it? Except scientists omitted to advise that chloroform is a particularly dangerous carcinogen<<

Except that they didn't bleedin' well know, did they?

And if you propose that science needs to wait more than a hundred years before releasing a new treatment into the world, just on the off-chance it might eventually be discovered to increase risk, then heaven help us all.

>>The remainder of your post lacks any substance and is not worth responding to<<

Of course. Totally beneath your dignity.

But just to humour me, can you please justify, even in the smallest degree your statement that "Cancers have increased along with scientific developments"

Are you suggesting that scientific developments actually cause cancer?

Do you have even the remotest scintilla of evidence to support this theory?

Or is it just emotional verbiage, like "a particularly dangerous carcinogen".

Just wondering.
Posted by Pericles, Monday, 11 June 2007 6:16:29 PM
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Dickie,it is not just the chemicals that cause genetic deviations that I'm talking about,but the natural genetic diversity that produces these dysfunctional aberations that may or may not cope with environmental change.My point is that natural evolution is painfully slow,cruel and inefficient.Human intelligence can engineer more intelligent beings that can cope with the new sophistocated world we have created for ourselves.

Unless we confront our shortcomings,we will go the way of the dinosaurs in a fraction of the time for which they existed.

Religions talk about the body being just an appendage of a greater self,but act as if our mortal being is everything and absolutely sacred.There is a serious hyprocracy here.George Pell is quite happy for deformed/disabled people to be born and suffer unimaginable misery,yet not let science relieve an agony that cannot possibly be experienced,unless you've been there.

Life is basically about now,and no one in authority has the right to tell us suffering is good because it benefits their ideological,imaginery world of self indulgent trips of power.
Posted by Arjay, Monday, 11 June 2007 10:22:27 PM
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Runner the assertion that god exists is the essence of arrogance because it is the expectation that the god believers fantasy be imposed on all others and the reality of others is meaningless.

God is irrelevant to this debate because god is nothing other than the superstitious articulation of the ego. Pells primary agenda is to use superstition to weild power over the lives of individuals. Pellk is clergy , the business of clergy is to convince you snake oil will cure your short comings. Pells pro-suffering stance highlights that god of the bible is ignorant of nature, god simply would not know the real world if he tripped over it, the god of the bible himself believes in myth. Pells income and personal power is in direct competition with medicine. Pell knows that his charms and occult spells (prayer) do not work , especially with serious illness. God has no power to regrow teeth, regrow hair, turn melenomas or regrow organs and limbs. Pells god is imputant in the face of scientific progress of understanding. Like all understandings of nature before it Stem cell research threatens to unmask the mythology behind Pells superstition. Knowledge is creeping foward to expose religious beliefs as psychological dysfunction. Perhaps with stem cell technologies we can repair the part of the brain which suffers the delusions of superstitionism and create a more peaceful and loving society.

God is the clay , it is man that made god.
Posted by West, Tuesday, 12 June 2007 11:11:27 AM
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Has anybody ever listened to the news programs, where the scientists have found a new cure for this & that, then finishing up saying it could be 5 years away before it might come on the market? THIS IS THE SHAM!! and a lot of BS! It becomes only a news item, because they are looking for funding for these projects! (at the taxpayers expense off course)
In the meantime we are being steered away from using natural products worldwide.see: http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/us/summit07/index.html
HELLOOO anybody awake enough to connect the dots?
Posted by eftfnc, Tuesday, 12 June 2007 3:41:52 PM
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My grandfather died young, of injuries he sustained during the Second World War. He survived to see it end but after a few years of terrible pain he died as surgical techniques of the time made surgery dangerous as the drugs to keep him alive did not exist yet.One wonders if Pell is against surgery too? As a young child in the 1970's I recall that family and friends who developed cancer were facing certain death. Last year I lost someone to an aggressive cancer , they lived twice as long with the disease as statistical precedences of the recent past as they used a new experimental drug. I now know many who have beaten the disease. If I think back of all the people I know that have had it and beaten it have contracted the disease in the last decade. Heart disease too , heart attack was once certain death. The later you can put those ills off the better your chances. Why? Because of medical progress.

Pell deals with the emotionally constructed world, the fairy land of dungeons and dragons. In the real world the only hope for so many ills is genetic therapy. To lessen suffering in the real world stem cell research must be conducted.

Pell claims he is against abortion but to be against stem cell research is to sentence so many babies that would not be aborted to death. There is no moral basis for preventing stem cell research. Let Pell worry about his dungeons and dragons club and leave the real world to the people with their heads in the real world.
Posted by West, Tuesday, 12 June 2007 5:33:17 PM
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People think that athiests or agnostics have no moral or ethical compass,well I hate to disappoint those with this popularily held opinion.Chimps and dogs have empathy within their family groups and they are not over awed by the concept of an all powerful being.

There may well be many superior consciousness' in our universe, however in evolutionary terms we are just minnows that live in one of millions of gigantic, unfathomable galaxies with our foot on the first rung of learning.Our consciousness will only progress at the anvil of honest learning and the traditional religions will have to evolve or become irrelevant.
Posted by Arjay, Thursday, 14 June 2007 12:17:16 AM
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