Opinion : Stem Cells

There has been a lot of debate recently about the morals of Stem cell research. Unfortunately, most of this debate is taking place between individuals who have no clue and are blinded by politics. I am always for research, but both sides make some good points. Personally, I believe the best solution would be to create as many unique lines as there are differentiated adult cells and then simply clone those for research. Also I agree that privately funded scientists should be allowed to do whatever they choose as long as their research has some scientific end. Some limits are reasonable though, and doing things because they can be done will quickly lead to trouble.
But back to the debate itself. What should be a scientific-ethical debate has been twisted by politicians to be an excuse to rile people up and make ad hominem arguments. A particularly worrisome example is this column by one of my otherwise favorite columnists, William Saletan. In contrast to his usually well reasoned articles on biotechnology, this column is just using stem cells as an opportunity to attack President Bush. While Saletan makes a worthwhile comparison between Bush's positions, he completely misses Bush's point. Sure you are killing one person for the good of others in both cases, but look at who is dying. In the Capital punishment case(or in the war on terrorism I suppose), it is a convicted killer, that is, someone who has been proved beyond reasonable doubt to have no respect for human life. In the stem cell case, the sacrifice is an innocent life, a baby if you will. Sure technically in both cases you are ending a life that at that point is useless to society, but there is a greater moral issue here, and I think most people can see why Bush might choose to kill the murderer and not a child.
For an example more relevant to this issue, lets say that in the future you are dying of kidney failure and need a transplant. Now you are given two options: either they can clone you, bring your clone to term, then abort him and harvest the new organs, or we can forcibly take them from someone spending life in prison for murder. Which would you choose? (Assuming that you won't reject both and die for your moral beliefs.) This is the real debate. I won't deny(and I assume Bush would agree) that the science is amazing and can save your life, its just that there is often a better alternative.
Nevertheless, this would only be a real problem if we actually could clone people and grow replacement organs. Yet that technology, and all the other benefits that stem cell research advocates point to does not exist yet. So we should spend lots of money on research and move them along right? Well California and a few others have started to act on this by making huge grants available, but is this worthwhile? I am a big fan of increasing funding for biomedical research (especially the research that I do) but we need to rethink our priorities. The fact is, infectious disease, along with cancer and heart disease are of much greater concern, and stem cell technology does not address any of these problems. Lets say that the state of California devotes a billion dollars of its research fund to regenerative stem cell technology and discovers how to regrow nerve cells. (a very likely scenario by the way) You can see the press coverage now...crippled people getting out of wheelchairs and walking, victims from horrible accidents making a full recovery. Sure this will be wonderful (and certainly overblown by the media) but this will only help maybe a few thousand people. And these people would mostly be middle to upperclass individuals, whose injuries are often at least partially their own fault. Now let's say that California had instead spent that Billion dollars on good-old-fashioned disease research and instead found a vaccine for malaria, or maybe AIDS. Estimates vary, but experts say that nearly 50 million people have AIDS and many more than that have TB and Malaria. This would clearly do the world a much greater good.
As bad as Parkinsons disease or chronic diabetes might seem, we are in far more danger from infectious disease and we should spend our research dollars accordingly. Unfortunately, Stem cell research is in vogue, and thanks to its politicized status, will certainly get disproportional funding.

(And again I find myself supporting Bush, who is proposing a sound policy for the wrong reasons. )

Dateline 5/25

After promising to call me in 3 days, Phillips finally gets back to me yesterday and wants an interview. So I do a phone interview this morning which amounted to a lot of nothing. The main person requested that I send him more info, but I just sent him an email asking him to remove me from consideration. The way I see it, by waiting so long, they put me in a lose-lose situation. If I take the internship, I have to break my commitment to AHRC (who I still need Med school recommendations from), if I go to camp (pretty much certain that I will) I will probably never get an engineering internship and the career development office will be pissed. Either way, it sure beats unemployment.

Technology

I will line up to buy this video game
Very cool stuff.

Dateline 5/19

I am home. This means doing housework and being bored. While I am only here for about 3 weeks, I am already getting sick of it.
My TV survived the moveback, as did all my other stuff. Actually the whole trip went well and was uneventful.
I am almost done filling out the AMCAS application as it has not taken as long as I thought it would. All I have left is to check on a few contact info issues and decide which schools to apply to. I went to a local library to research schools on monday, but I can't really narrow the list down untill I get my MCAT scores back.
I got my new car on the road monday, a 92 aquamarine colored Toyota Corrolla. It is in mint condition. It runs a little rougher and louder than my Nissan used to, but it also has a little more kick. The insurence for it was surprisingly cheap, only a little over $40 a month.
For the first time in a while, I actually had some real work today. I spent most of the day repainting the outside of my nextdoor neighbor's house. This little old lady had apparently wanted it done for awhile, but my father hates painting so she must have decided to wait till I came home. She actually came over wednesday night with 3 pounds of pasta and asked me during the dinner that ensued. I just can't say no to an old woman. And speaking of crazy female neighbors, I had quite the chat with the woman who lives on the other side of my house as well. Her and my father are apparently locked in some sort of blood feud, (for reasons that are mutual but have never been clear to me) but she is really nice to me. I talked about my studies and told her how everyone in our family was doing, and she invited me to her next barbeque. She just doesn't seem that evil to me...
I am trying to design a new website for the BU premed society. I decided to use a blogger template and host it at BU. I am going to go work on that now.

Dateline 5/13

This is it, the semester is over! It really flew by. The last week has been insane, with either work or exams every day and of course packing to leave, which I am doing in about 12 hours by the way. A lot of things are currently going on right now, here are a few of them:
As for my writing class, I get an email the other day saying something to the effect that I wrote the best paper in the class and the Prof. wanted to use it as a sample next year. Then I look at the course grade, and I got a B+, despite acing the final paper and the oral project. What kind of BS is that...I politely requested that the Prof. explain this via email, to be continued...
As for my Engineering classes, so far they seem to be going pretty well. The Biomechanics exam that I took today was surprisingly easy and short, not that it means that I did wonderful on it. I really crammed for the control systems final and did pretty well on it, getting a B in the class, which is pretty good considering I failed the second midterm. As for Thermodynamics, I did lousy on the final, but I think I did ok in the overall class. We will see later how the grading goes for that and my lab sections.
As for my employment status, this area is starting to become strange. I got an email from the career office that I was matched up for a position at Phillips medical systems in Andover. The problem is that they told me this yesterday and I am moving out tomorrow. While no real decisions seem to have been made yet, If they choose to interview or hire me, this will put me in a very awkward position. I am not sure that I will want to make a 6 hr. drive to an interview next week, but we will have to see. In addition, I confirmed that I would work at Camp Anne this year as of last week. Apparently, I can choose when I will show up, but the then strongly recommended June 7th. I told them that I would get back to them on that... It turns out that my best friend from high school and his girlfriend are also planning to go up there and work this year, so that should make it even more fun.
The major thing that I need to worry about in the next two weeks is filling out my medical school application. MCAT scores don't come out until the first week of June but the application takes a ridiculous amount of time(the instruction booklet is 120 pages), and it is live as of last week, so I am going to fill it out now before I have to work at some summer job. I also need to decide what schools to apply to and look up the requirements.
So that brings me to moving, which I will be doing tomorrow as soon as my father gets into town. My stuff is mostly all packed up; all I need to do is clean things up and pack up my computer. Oddly enough, the professor I work for in the lab has decided to pay me a visit before 9am tomorrow morning (on her way to a mental health run), so I will be getting an early start. After that, I will do a load of laundry, clean the apt, and pack up my stuff to wait for my father. When he gets here, we will get the Uhaul truck and load it. I hope that this will go smoothly (probably not) and we will then drive back to Rochester NY, hopefully not taking too long. I am not generally to happy about staying at my parents' house, but it will certainly be a nice change of pace for the next few days. Anyway, I need to go to bed.

Opinion : The American Empire

I just got back from a talk by Dinesh D'souza (awesome speaker, by the way) where he presented the idea of American foreign policy as spreading the "American Empire" among many other points. He repeatedly defended America's spreading of its values to other countries, even if force is necessary. He also alluded to the resistance seen at home and abroad by the critics of this policy. I would like to add my own view to this idea as well by claiming that the ends justify the means, and defining just what those ends are.

So ask yourself, what is the American way of life? D'souza pointed out that democracy is a collective term that goes beyond just free elections and includes things such as capitalism, commercial culture, and ideological freedom. In fact, life in America is more defined by what we consume than what we believe in (for most people at least). Before you say that that this is bad however, consider the consequences to our society. We have the most stable government on earth, the lowest rates of infectious disease and illiteracy, more food than we can eat, and the most advanced technology in pretty much all areas. Our standard of living is ridiculous and our own stupid actions probably represent the greatest danger in our daily lives. Religions flourish despite our rampant idolatry, as does a unique culture (yes, pop music is culture). Our regional differences are put aside in our uniting pursuit of the all-mighty dollar. Now compare this to the rest of the world. Are conditions that good in Africa, South America, China, or the Middle East? Even Europe, with its liberal politics and traditional freedoms has twice our unemployment rate and much more varying standards of living.

So let us consider for a minute a world that was conquered by and turned into the United States. Assuming this world reflects the current United States, there would be much less disease, poverty, and oppression. We will essentially have ended hunger and achieved world peace. Their would be a wider acceptance of human rights and much more freedom, social mobility, education, technological progress, and creative expression than there is in the world right now. In addition, regional cultures can survive commercialism; just look at Japan.

I realize that the US has its problems, but it is still the best system that humanity has come up with. Compared to most of the world, the US is a utopia; and isn't that utopian vision worth fighting for? I like to believe that as privileged as we are, we have a duty to spread the wealth and help others enjoy the freedoms and amenities that we take for granted. Ironically, peace and justice often need to be accomplished through violence. The US itself was forged in a devastating war, and freedom always has a price. In the long term, the ends (in this case peace, freedom, progress, etc.) justify the violent means.

Our current foreign policy may be bogged down in self-interest matters (D'souza denies this), but I believe we as a country need to look at the big picture and start to see how our actions can bring about the greater good. Moreover, the rest of the world needs to take an objective look at what we have in this country, and consider how they can help themselves or people in less fortunate regions.

Dateline 5/1

Only 3 more days of classes left. I finished my final writing paper today, and my last lab and problem sets will following shortly. I cannot believe how fast this semester went by. I am moving back to Rochester in 13 days and it occured to me this morning that I should start packing up. I am leaving literally 12 hours after my last exam and that won't leave much time to clean up the ridiculous amount of junk that I have been hoarding throughout the year.

I went to the BU comedy show(tourgasm's final stop) last night, and Dane Cook was awsome. also they finally brought Family Guy back this week. Goes to show that you should judge a show on content and not ratings. Of course the reason that Family guy got bad ratings in the first place is because the Nielsen system can't account properly for non-permanant resident viewers (read: college students) but thats another story...