i know this has absolutely bugger all to do with B&S, but i've been sitting playing tetris, listening to the news, and the whole furore about human cloning that's come up after that government announcement about using human embryos for the stem cells really got me thinking. this pro-life campaigner - a woman - said that creating an embryo, taking the stem cells, and then discarding the embryo, was the equivalent of murder. i thought that was ridiculous. fair enough, the clump of cells that makes up an embryo has the *potential* to become a baby and then be born and grow up to have many many life experiences, such as listening to B&S and realising that maybe life isnt quite so bad*, but surely until that happens, it's just a clump of cells. shouldn't it have to be concious to be considered alive, which would then make discarding it murderous? then a scientist/boffin type guy talked about what the medical researchers would actually DO with the cells they want to take from the embryos. apparently, stem cells can be used to grow organs (always useful for transplants) brain tissue (which he said could be used to combat things like Parkinsons and Alzheimers) and other useful bits and bobs. but of course, there's lots of debate and people throwing their hands up in horror, saying it's all a crime against the human race, etc etc. at this point i began to think about evolution. some people out there may think that what i'm about to say is a harsh viewpoint, but i can only apologise and say that it's only what I think, it's hardly gonna change the world. i have been thinking recently about evolution, natural selection, survival of the fittest etc., in relation to our species. i think that the human race, as a species, has backed itself into an evolutionary dead end. the development of medical science and technology over the last 200 years has meant that (and this is from a strictly biological perspective, i'm not trying to discriminate against anyone on the grounds of colour, creed, gender, religion, faith, age or anything else) people who would not have had the chance to breed because they would not have survived, have actually done so. the offspring produced therefore carry negative genetic traits. i saw an advert in a magazine last week for a cancer charity. it said that one in three people will get some form of cancer at some time in their lives. i was stunned. one in three. those aren't good odds. statistically, out of me and my two brothers, one of us is going to get cancer. i think that's a really scary thought. it makes me wonder if all our higher brain functions are really such a gift. we may be able to choose who we mate with, but is it really such a bonus to be able to override the survival instincts that tell our brains 'not him/her, s/he is not healthy'. in the end, the human race is going to die because there'll be nobody left fit enough to actually survive. i'm just trying to look at the bigger picture with all this, a sort of world view kinda thing. i know that there are many people out there whose lives have been affected by disease and things like cancer. i'm not trying to trivialise anyones problems or feelings, i'm just trying to make sense of something that scares me and that, at the moment, is slowly killing someone i love very much. this my of dealing with that, but i'm sorry if i have offended anyone. i would appreciate other people's thoughts on the subject. karen xxxxx *did you like the way i managed to get a little relevance in there!!?! +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "peculiarly deranged fanbase" "frighteningly named +-+ +-+ Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+