From the Newsletter of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network

Memorial or Mausoleum is an article from the newsletter of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network.

This is an excellent article about the huge pursuit of embryonic stem cell research in California. The author, Evan Rosa, writes about the very buildings used for such research to help his readers understand the ugliness of the situation in California.

The Center for Bioethics and Culture offers resources on such life and death topics as euthanasia, physician assisted suicide and embryonic stem cell research. I met the founder Jennifer Lahl several years ago when I went with my daughter from Georgia to listen to a debate between the utilitarian ethics professor, Peter Singer, (who advocates killing babies after one month of birth if they are unsuitable to their parents) and Dr. Nigel M. de S. Cameron author with Chuck Colson of Human Dignity in the Biotech Century: A Christian Vision for Public Policy.

Jennifer Lahl was working toward her degree in Bioethics while my son-in-law was working toward his degree in New Testament at Trinity International Seminary. My daughter enjoyed auditing bioethics classes and that is how they met. I want to highly recommend the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network.

The article starts out:

"Are the buildings in our lives meaningful? Or are they merely physical--neutral spaces devoid of value in themselves?

I don't think it's too controversial that a building could mean something: maybe where you got married, maybe where your children were born, maybe where you worked your first job.

My concern here is the great potential for cultural and ideological influence that buildings bear. Structures aid in forming our visual landscape; they shelter us, inspire us, imprison us. By 2010, we'll have another 12 structural influencers, all dedicated to human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research."

He later continues with:

"Please entertain a brief diversion to help me explain the problem. I sense a greater issue at work here: the cultural importance and ideological influence of human embodiment and the physicality of structures . In an age that teems with Internet social media communities, online universities, remote employment and Web-based grocery stores, the modern humanoid doesn't really ever have to leave its house. It will communicate with others, get a degree, work for some cash, and feed itself just fine. But I doubt that the majority of us will ever reach such a reclusive, barely-human state. I'm hopeful and confident that we'll maintain direct human contact, and continue to move through physical spaces, despite the temptations of convenience and immediacy. At the same time I'm beset with concern about the nature and quality of these relationships and physical spaces where we exist.

Back to the buildings at hand: It's a physical situation. Physical sciences are involved. Physical structures are involved. This involves physical persons (the greatest of these?) conducting experiments on other physical persons (the least of these?). And aren't we much more than physical ? Yet we identify so tangibly with these physical things, I begin to wonder how deeply our regular surroundings can embed certain beliefs and values and assertions in our minds. "

The whole article.

Be sure, at the end, to click on the link in the bio of the author, ex- tree-sitters , for a laugh. So maybe its just my California sense of humor.