Stem Cell Research : To be or not to be?

To me its a debate between future or healthy future and at what cost.

Stem cell research has shown a great potential in curing hereditary diseases as well as in diagnosing a disease whose reason and pathway in a body on macro and micro level is unknown.

Blood transfusion, bone marrow transplant etc. are practiced for last 30 years and many of us do not know even that these the products of stem cells reasearch. But as they are taken from a grown person and not from an embryo, they are termed as non-embryonic stem cells or adult stem cells. Now the scientists are exploiting the fact that a fully grown human being also has cells which show capability of reproduction or division. The research in this area is unveiling the capacities of adult stem cells beyond blood transfusions and bone marrow transplants. But unfortunately these are not as flexible (plastic) as the embryonic stem cells are.

Embryonic stem cells could show miracles in the medicine world, as it has ability to grow heart or brain cells or many other organs under controlled environment. There is no way an adult cell would match these capacities of embryonic stem cells. Now, the question is do we want to explore these capacities? Are we ready to pay its cost of unethical practices?

Sometimes I agree with the protestors of embryonic stem cell research that the nature should take its own course and nobody should disturb its creational capacities. But had it been true, earth for us would not be an easy place to live. All the luxuries in our lives are attributed to scientists who tried to understand the path of nature and most importantly tried to change that path. Test tube babies and other artificial insemination techniques, cell cultures, engineered guinea pigs etc would not have enriched our lives with drug inventions and other types of implants, if we would have left the nature the way it was.

Now, comes the question of ethics. Is it ethical to not let the embryo grow? Is it not like a murder? What do these protestors care about murders and life destruction? What do they do when thousands of female fetuses are discarded in India and in other developing countries? What did they do when the thousands of pregnant women as well as children were killed in Africa? What do they do when thousands are still killed in wars which are due to whim of a person who is president of super power? I have never heard a word uttered by these so called humanitarians or philanthropists in the protest of such unethical acts. I have never heard in any of the news when poor people in India are stripped of their organs in the name of free surgical camps. I am sure that similar unethical practices are practiced in other developing countries. Poor are still suffering as they were suffered in the beginning of civilization. Whether embryonic stem cell research is continued or aborted, plight of poor will be the same. The phenomenon of ripping off the poor is eternal.
In my opinion one should consider of embryonic stem cell research as key to healthy future. Future with crippled youth and troubled senility could be and should be avoided when its in reach of completely possible. The solution should also consist a ban on cloning. But to stop the embryonic stem cell research is obstinate.

Stop dreaming about ethical practices. It is based on the same ideals on which Communism is based. We know it didn't work. And we know this (stem cell research) couldn't be stopped.

DETERMINISTIC CHAOS

I recently came to know about the concepts of deterministic chaos in Control system class. As the part was included in our mid term exam, we toiled hard to know the concepts and definitation related to the phenomenon. Suddenly we came across the definition of word 'deterministic' in terms of philosophy on wikipedia.org and the definition was like this:
"A deterministic system is a conceptual model of the philosophical doctrine of deteminism applied to a system for understanding everything that has and will occur in the system, based on the physical outcomes of causality . In a deterministic system, every action, or cause, produces a reaction, or effect, and every reaction, in turn, becomes the cause of subsequent reactions. The totality of these cascading events can theoretically show exactly how the system will exist at any moment in time."
This reminded me of Hindu philosophy where the concept of ones fate is completely based upon such a deterministic system and concept of rebirth has evolved from it.
We learned about the chaos in context of stability of the system. We read some papers where scientist were sure that most of the systems in nature are nonlinear and even though nonlinear systems are driven by deterministic forces and scientists have linearized the nonlinear systems to understan a system, it is not possible to predict the behavior of that system over a long period. Its exactly like the weather prediction. The system is completely nonlinear and accurate weather predictions could be possible only for a week after which it becomes less accurate and after a long time predictions are absurd. This is because many small factors affect system which are impossible to take into account while modeling a system. This is Lorenzt theory.
On the same concept is it possible that hindu philosophy is over simplifying the system of fate. Is it possible to depict such a complex system as linear? What if it is nonlinear? or is it that the life span of human is so short as compared to the whole universe that linearization of this system will give accurate results? What if the span is not short? Are there such factors exisist which could cause perturbations in the system and are amplified due to cascading effect and then the system becomes chaotic?
It came to me while discussion that if we are modeling a human karma, its not just a short life time but whole cycle is applied to 'atma' where it takes birth over and over again till the error or his the sins are zero or the feelings or the attachment with this world is zero. But again is it possible for anybody to fine tune the system and anticipate all kinds of perturbation?