Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Can't Get Around It

NAIS.
Genetically modified plants.
Transgenic and cloned animals.
Nationally mandated personal "smart chip" I.D. cards for all citizens.
Chicken meat with human DNA.
Sheep milk with pharmaceuticals genetically engineered into it.


There arises a common denominator...... ETHICS. Our world has become less gentle and we cannot gently withdraw from the encroaching issues. They directly affect us all.

No matter who we are, what our faith, what our lifestyle, sooner or later (now, sooner)...something we touch or eat or drink or breathe or wear or use will require our awareness....and our ethical choice.

There is an interesting phenomenon with all this supposed broadening of new "advances"...the parameters of our choice and voice in relation to those "advances" are narrowing.

Follow the money. Where there is pharmaceutically-engineered DNA milk (or whatever the official word for that is), there is a pharmaceutical company, with "research," and with hands tightly clasping the mainstream medical community, and big buck lobbyists.

BEFORE buying the "this will help Granny live to age 150," or "this will regenerate limbs," or "this will wipe out (name the terminal condition)," don't we need to look at who's shouting loudest...you know, the ones BEHIND the REAL people being sold the "sure cure" arguments? It infuriates me that victims of horrible illnesses are being used for mad science to peddle arguments for cures to the public, when really it's really all about engineering a whole new market and marketplace for the BIG MONOPOLIES.

It's not the little guy who's benefitting here. And despite the promises of a medical Utopia, does the chance at manipulating this symptom and that condition justify creating an environment resulting in resistant-strains and super-plagues that could wipe out whole populations? And confusing the purity of animal and human DNA by crossing the boundaries built in to begin with?

Ethics is not just a college course or the domain of seminary students. Somehow, there has to be right and wrong, and a right WAY and a wrong WAY.

What happens when these altered genetics begin filtering through the entire creation as we know it??

We have to decide what our standard is, and how it is to be interpreted for our day. It's not a matter of theory. It's a matter of our survival.

We believe, we act. We live according to a code, a standard, a defining point...even having no code is its own code.

I'll be looking in the Torah to see what it says about these things. We're seeing what happens when some of the most basic boundaries are transgressed deliberately by man's arrogance. I need to study more, and see the instructions in the texts specific to these issues. When it says the instructions in the scriptures are life-giving, I'm beginning to understand just how much that's not just a convenient metaphor.

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