“Science is a social issue.” (Pablo, 2009)
Hear him, hear him. It couldn’t have been said any better.
Due to the mercurial twists of our neurons, that afternoon, which could have been spent at the comfort of our homes, was rather ceded to an ACLE (Alternative Classroom Experience) my friend and I never planned to take part in. Contrary to its appearance as a seemingly bad option which requires a back-up save file, it led us to another alternate ending our indecisive (not to mention, unimaginative) neurons never thought of. Apart from the fact that the time I spent there allowed me to catch my sister in the mall and snag a shawarma, it proved to be a genuinely enlightening talk about stem cells.
Unbeknownst to me until that day, the most promising type of stem cell is the embryonic one obtained from a certain stage of a human’s development in his mother’s womb. Sad to say, the process involves obliteration of the life it never even had a firsthand experience of. Though, of course, you couldn’t make out any human face or body of a blastocyst, it’s still a reality that it was bound to be an animate thing. Who knows what those humans which have been subjected to experiments could have been? The next Einstein? The next scientist who could have discovered the cure to cancer? And you bet, “Life is unfair” wouldn’t be enough to justify this. It’s not a wonder why it’s a scalding topic.
For now, let me abstain. If I am to side against stem cells and don a mindset that every person will conk out anyway and that there is no need to postpone death, then storyline I chose for myself is serving no useful purpose. However, picking otherwise would make me a remorseless entity —which I am slowly becoming but I have no plan of becoming fully.
Recently, there were researches that boast of being able to produce stem cells which do not involve the noted process. Yet it is a big leap, it also suggests the possibility of cloning. And that, needless to say, is a bigger and a more searing problem. Not only does it alarm the Catholic community, but also question the subconscious side of entities. Indeed, science is a social issue. Science was never just for the scientists nor the researchers. It has always been a matter for the masses; the scientists were just translating it to us all along.
At the end of the day, that ACLE was a good treat for my indecisive, unimaginative and naive neurons.
