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?

Maharashtra Ruled by Non-maharashtrian

I haven't studied this subject in depth, but being a maharashtrian and a marathi I have always heard about "Maharashtrian mentality" which is pulling the marathi community back in the race of power. Its been a common topic discussed amongst marathi as well as non-marathi community in Maharashtra.

I came across two articles on this topic by a non-marathi and a marathi. One tried to quote the reasons of Maharashtrian's failure in business and other tried to rule out any failure,rather he claimed marathi influence in the field of arts and sports.

Is it enough to compare whole marathi community on the basis of how a marathi performs his business or how his work ethics are or how much flexibilty he has at his work place? Is it enough to prove that the marathi's are not ruled by non-maharashtrian because they are excelling in sports and arts?

However its bitter but one should agree that there is a remarkable hold of non-marathi's on Mumbai and whole Maharashtra politics.Its not limited only to Mumbai but in every market and every office,even in the administrative departments we see non-marathi supremacy. We simply cannot deny that marathi people failed to defend themselves against non-marathi's encroachment on marathi territory.Or is it that we never realized that there is encroachment? And now we are so despaired that we see no hope to rise against this non marathi dominance? Or is it the "Marathi mentality" which is holding marathi people back from taking any action? Are we afraid that we would succumb to this dominance and nobody will give us a helping hand to come out of it evenif they are sympathatic and capable?

What is this "Marathi mentality"? Does this overshadows Marathi's only? Its not that non-maharashtian's are free from this mentality.Let's go deeper into this topic and try to find the roots of this mentality.If we try to go back into India's history, we could see that there was Chhatrapati Shivaji or Peshwa's were free from this mentality.Tilak,Hedgewar,Sawarkar,Agarkar,Tatya Tope all were marathi's.And Nathuram Godse also was a marathi.I am not proud or ashamed of him.He is a part of Indian history and it needs guts to murder a man.Ofcourse he had reasons and we could have different opinions about him.Anyways,let's not digress.Let's not label this mentality as "Maharashtrian".If you go back in pre-indepence era,everybody had this same thinking.We hold marathi's responsible for their downfall because we do not support each other,rather, given a chance, we betray each other for smallest of small opportunity to climb up the ladder of success.Was it not true when British ruled India?Weren't people uncoopretaive to the rebellions who wanted independent India?They not only betrayed the freedom fighter's but sold their independence to get promotion in British services or to win a piece of land.We blame marathi's to be afraid of taking any actions which could be risky for his life or career despite all the available facilities.Was is it impossible for Indians to gain our independence back from British Army?How many were they and how many were us?What held us back then?Can we call this mentality as a Maharashtrian? In first place, how did East India company become successful in establishing its roots in India? We were to busy to fight with neighbors.Weren't they from Punjab,Delhi,Haryana,Uttar Pradesh or Rajasthan?If they are so clever and alert how did they couldn't realized Company's motive? Or were they so desperate to prove their supremacy to the neighboring maharaja's that they readily walked into Company's trap?First article said that Marathis are ready to break but not ready to show flexibilty.What about those people who were not ready forget their differences temporarily and unite to fight against their enemy? These people also lacked unity.They also lacked flexibilty.They were too stupid to forgive the enemy and then killed by the same enemy.It was Sambhaji Raje from Maharashtra who denied to become a muslim and there was Mirza Raje from Rajasthan who readily married their sister to a muslim under pressure and who happily fought against Shivaji to show their faith to Moghuls. Do you expect this kind of flexibilty?It would have been impossible to fight for the freedom with such a ethical and moral flexibilty.
Non marathi's have no right to blame marathi's for being opportunists,coward,spineless and egoist because they belong to a lineage who has same character,may be worse than marathi's.Its only 58 years after independence, shouldn't a non-marathi forget his past so early and so quickly.
I agree with the second author who asked the readers to think over the circumstances with broader views.We should first see how Gujarati people or Rajasthani people are behaving in Gujarat or Rajasthan.I am 100% sure that the scenario there is not different than Maharashtra.But they are not ruled by marathi or other people.Marathi's are not faultless.They need to come out of their secured world and face the rough realities.In one of the articles it is mentioned that marathis don't have motive to make progress.They don't have competetion in their community.Kirloskar is already a hot shot in marathi community and he doesn't have a motive to become Tata,Birla or Ambani.I completley agree with this point.We do not dream big.we harp on achievements of Shivaji and Peshwe and now we have representatives in our history book why should we strive to make a history or be a noticable part of it.Acheiving a highest position in a company makes me on the top of marathi world why should I own it?I am getting my meals and other luxuries why should I work harder to be a ruler when I am getting all my comforts being a servant.Come on people think big! Its been 58 years after independence and other people are deciding the direction of politics.Business policies are decided my non-marathis.We should not tolerate this dominance.

It could be true that people from other resion of country could behave in a similar manner as a marathi behaves in Maharashtra but we never see Marathi influence on any other part of India.When they come out of their state they always unite and try to help people from their state ot community.How many Marathi do that?We don't help each other when we are outside Maharashtra.We are mean and laid back people.We are the materialssutiable for servants.No unity,no motives,no principles,no sense of belongingness to Maharashtra.We are divided.

Work hard.Be in the focus of media.Be a fierce compititor, no matter how high you are in marathi community you should not be satisfied till you reach the top of entire Indians.Do not stamp yourself as White collar people.Form non-governement organizations.Help other people in country.Show your presence and make others to notice it.

Remeber the world is changing.If your survival demands some flexibilty,aleast think about the other possibilities.Do not deny it right away.

Jai Maharashtra!