Diana's Blurb
According to a poll I heard mentioned on the radio this week, reality television is the second worst idea of all time, beaten only by the atom bomb. I think I would put human/animal hybrids above it myself. After all the television has an off switch but once created these genetic mishmashes do not. Of course those people who are for abortion would probably not hesitate to destroy something they had created but who decides what that actually is? If it has human genes, does it have human rights? At what point does human life begin – conception or birth? What is the difference between the uterus and an incubator to a baby of twenty-four weeks gestation? It is equally dependant on either its mother or nurse for survival or otherwise.
What happens when scientists move on to human/plant hybrids because they find plant genes are so much better at regulating cholesterol levels, or some such specious reasoning? As I heard said this week, being able to do a thing does not mean you have to do it. God ordained “more ways of killing a cat than choking it with butter” (as my Grandmother would say) and just because gene therapy can cure some things this does not mean they have to be cured or that some better way than this is not waiting to be discovered.
I continue to feel the world is running mad – completely devoid of commonsense. Perhaps I should stop reading the papers and listening to the news. Today I have read an article about a council in Wales that wants to cut down a one hundred and fifty year old Monkey Puzzle (Chilean Pine) tree on the village green in case a child pricks itself on the leaves. There have been no recorded injuries throughout its long life but the men with the red tape feel it could be as dangerous as the used syringes they clear from the same area. Well excuse me but I always understood the risk from syringes was from drugs and blood borne disease, not injury – how many trees do you know that use heroin, how many people have caught pine needle blight or a terminal aphid infestation?
In the same paper there was an article about a synthetic, oxytocin, nasal spray (what they are calling the brain’s “cuddle chemical”), being developed for people who are socially inept – it removes their inhibitions and makes the party go with a swing. Have they thought it through? It may work wonders for the autistic or profoundly shy but what happens when it falls into the hands of rapists or worse? One only needs to look at RohipnolÔ (the date-rape drug) or ViagraÔ to see what happens when these things get onto the black market – especially easy in these days of anonymous internet shopping.
I wonder what the people of the Bible would have made of all this. Obviously, Man was given free will and he seems to be using it, but is he correct? Going back to basics (to borrow a slogan from the political arena), God created the heavens and the earth and all that in them is. Who are we to try and tinker with His basic designs? Yes He gave us the power to reason and discover but also the guidebook and if it is not Biblical it cannot be right. We need to study the blueprint and be humbled by His sublime creations.
