This goes in my “We didn’t ask for it. We prefer not to. We can’t stop it and if we don’t do it, they will call the shots” category. And if they do it, we will pay out the nose for patents for the foreseeable future. And, most importantly, if this is so touchy and morally complex, why would we want another country with a less than stellar human rights record, control it? And make no mistake, the companies that patent drugs and processes do control them. And they call the shots. That’s why the Chinese gov sees this as a key inroad to pharmaceuticals and the health industry. As difficult as this is, we need to be doing this research. To get the edge so we can dictate the terms and do our best to keep it as close to right or good or God’s will or whatever you want to call it.
Turning a blind eye and ceding control is not the moral choice. This is going on, we know it. And it will continue to go on and will affect our lives intimately. Does anyone seriously think they wont come up with a genetic process that the mass of Canadians, Americans and Europeans will want?? Once it’s “safe”. Of course we will. But we’ll be buying it from China. Watching the incredible drama unfold, in China. Paying patent fees to China. Watching researchers move to China.
I doubt most people realise how many crazy experiments by early medical pioneers happened. Like this man who stabbed his own eye back to the eye socket to see what would happen. Nothing, it healed up. He was an early pioneer in eye surgery but his name escapes me at the moment.
Or the evil experiments that happened in history but were then used to bolster research. This is on the utter evil side but did you know that the American occupation force gave light sentences to Japan’s infamous and evil by any definition Unit 731 medical staff? The reasoning at the time was, the research happened, the evil occurred, the data exists that will never be recreated, (rogue experiments on living people, giving terrible diseases),but the data exists. Unit 731 took meticulous notes. So the occupying forces decided to give the data to American pharmaceutical companies. So they could use it to make drugs to help people.
The reason why Western medicine leads the way is the result of many events and experiments that will never be recreated. It wasn’t pretty. Some was the worst things man ever did to fellow man. I’m not saying we should ever recreate these experiments or that this is similar. Just that it’s good to think about where that new miracle drug came from and where the future ones will. Either way, we don’t want to leave it to others to decide. We really don’t have a choice about humanity going forward with this. It’s already on its way to a theatre near you.
Love to hear your thoughts on this contentious issue. Please leave comments below. Thanks for reading to the end!
For more info on China’s research into cloning, click here http://phys.org/news/2016-04-human-cloning-chinese-characteristics.html
