I found myself in a yoga class tonight, here in the suburbs, and it occurred to me that I've been in a yoga class every September 11 since 2001. I think unconsciously I gravitate towards a place, towards people, that I know are peace-loving. It's a funny term, given Bush's constant use of "freedom haters" and "freedom lovers" when he should have been talking about peace. Freedom doesn't mean much when people are killing and dying for it. Anyway, I find it interesting that yoga is always the same. In every country, in every town, a yoga class is always about finding inner peace and radiating it out to the world. Yoga has become one of the largest counter-culture communities in a world that prefers war and violence to peace and love. It is amazing web of individuals who travel all over the world spreading that message of love and peace. Even if the towns are different from one another, within the walls of a yoga class, everyone is the same. A woman in the class had on a shirt that said "My religion is simple, my religion is kindness." Her husband's shirt simply said "peace." It was exactly the place to be on this day.
Just as the past seven years have been, the week was filled with irony as "In three reports delivered to Congress on Wednesday, the department’s inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, found wrongdoing by a dozen current and former employees of the Minerals Management Service, which collects about $10 billion in royalties annually and is one of the government’s largest sources of revenue other than taxes." Whoa, the second largest source of revenue? Who knew that? I certainly didn't. It sheds quite another light on the idea that this country is addicted to oil. Even more ironic is our pal Palin's comment in an interview tonight that she is ready to lead and in fact, ready to be president! She says "“You have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on, reform of this country and victory in the war.” What kind of reform is she talking about I wonder. Moral reform? I think that's the platform George W. Bush rode in on and look where that got us. Enron, Guantanamo, and now this, "a culture of ethical failure, a dysfunctional organization that has been riddled with conflicts of interest, unprofessional behavior and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush administration’s watch."
Reports describe government employees taking gifts and accepting vacations, having sex with and taking drugs with oil company employees. Sounds fun! All this while taking in the second largest haul for the government. Suddenly people are wondering if pushing for offshore drilling is such a hot idea and Palin's talking about drilling in Alaska. This is one of those stories that makes me think, finally, people will hear the truth. Finally, people will see what a mess Bush has made. Palin called them "blunders" as if someone tripped over the dog or spilled milk. I wouldn't describe what's happened in our country for the last seven years as a series of blunders, I'd call it a culture of ethical failure.
Showing posts with label ethics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ethics. Show all posts
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Kingo the lowland gorilla
Last week I had to make a trip to L.A. I took my National Geographic on the plane and I was reading an article about the Western Lowland Gorilla, a truly magnificent beast. Kingo has a family of ten, four “wives” and their children. He spends a lot of time to himself, sitting in a swamp sometimes for hours eating the tiny green roots of a water plant. His kids rough house while their mothers nap and together and independently they roam an area about 6 miles in diameter, looking for fruit to eat or a good place to nap and play, traveling over a mile a day. One morning the research team found them 100 feet up in a tree having their breakfast!
The article said we didn’t know much about them because it takes years for a human to gain their confidence enough to observe them. Despite their size, it took a team of four local trackers to find Kingo and his family but it took six years for Diane Doran-Sheehy (responsible for saving this piece of the forest that Kingo and his family live in) to originally find and name them.
Then I came across this sentence, “Even though all gorillas found in zoos around the world are western gorillas, little is known about their behavior in the wild.” I just started weeping, right there on the plane. The image of this complex and incredible animal in a concrete cage, without his family, without his swamp and trees, without his six miles to roam and wander, without the peace and privacy to take his daily nap, just broke my heart. We don't even know enough about his behavior in the wild to even ATTEMPT to replicate his environment. How, I ask myself, how do we justify that? I had to force myself to try to think of something else, anything that would keep me from crying.
A few days later I was reading an article about the natural science museum finally opening this year in Golden Gate park. It's an impressive and beautiful building with a living green roof and solar panels, it's being touted as a highly responsible ecological building and yet, they are going to feature 38,000 animals in their aquariums. Granted they're growing coral and using local seawater but still, a space the size of this building must surely be much smaller than their complex and vast natural habitat, the ocean. I understand that we want to educate people about animals but I just haven't seen the data to support the theory that animals in captivity on display have helped any in the wild. By my count, the wild animals of this world are vanishing at an extremely alarming rate.
Then I was in Berkeley with a friend of mine. We passed an older hippie guy on the street with a clipboard. He was wearing the kind of socks that have toes in different colors, and Birkenstocks. He was collecting signatures for a farm bill; I know the one because I’ve already signed it and because I’m a Humane Society member. I thanked him and walked on. Another guy passed him and I heard the hippie ask him to sign a petition for a bill that would allow farm animals to move around in their cages. The guy just shook his head and moved on.
About an hour later, we were in a furniture store while my friend was looking for a bed. I heard the hippie in my head asking for help so the animals could “move around in their cages.” It made me sick, I thought it’s like asking for less torture, more humane captivity, the irony is ridiculous. I can’t believe we have to fight for this, that we have to try to convince people to care enough to not torture their animals before they kill them. I was overwhelmed with grief and had to leave the store. I couldn’t stop crying and my friend didn’t even believe me when I said it was because of the animals.
A few weekends ago, I almost volunteered to be that person collecting signatures. Can you imagine? What would someone do if they didn’t sign the petition and I started crying? I wonder. So today I was reading an interesting article in The New York Times Magazine about morality. The author says that we are genetically moral creatures. That we universally believe in certain principles that are possibly biologically motivated to keep us alive. Universally, we feel that it is wrong to harm others, we believe in fairness, we value community and loyalty, we respect authority and we revere purity. Where it gets tricky, however, is in the ranking and weight of those morals.
There are instances, for example, where certain cultures allow harm to those who are considered impure. Or where fairness is denied to those who disrespect authority. The upholding of these morals can be wildly divergent even if the basic motivation is the same. Liberals, for example, tend to rank fairness much higher than purity or loyalty. Also very interesting, was the fact that certain behaviors cycle in and out of morality.
Smoking has become morally bad since the emphasis on second-hand smoke whereas getting a divorce is more or less accepted as a fact of life. And certainly we have widened the net of who deserves humane treatment as time goes on. Slavery, once an acceptable economic practice, is now reviled pretty much the world over. I have a dream, in the words of our Martin Luther King, Jr. that someday we’ll consider keeping an animal in a cage as barbaric as selling a man on an auction block.
A McKinsey survey published in The Economist showed that out of 15 major issues of the next five years, the environment is number 1 globally but the top issues after the environment are safer products, retirement benefits, health-care benefits and affordable products. These are pretty much the same things we've always been concerned about. Ethically produced products is near the bottom of the list and I assume that the welfare of animals falls in that category. So we want to protect the environment, meaning that we don't want to die, but aren't really concerned about everything else dying? I think we feel that we can't care about everything, that we have to pick our battles.
So I’ve learned that there isn’t anything wrong with me and there isn’t anything wrong with everyone else for that matter. It’s just that our moral barometers are all set differently. Looking at my five spheres of morality, by far the largest would be harm, followed by purity, which I think is where my love of nature comes from. The spheres of fairness, loyalty and authority are there but much smaller. If I had to choose between having money for retirement and seeing animals roam free, I'm afraid I'd choose the animals over myself.
The article said we didn’t know much about them because it takes years for a human to gain their confidence enough to observe them. Despite their size, it took a team of four local trackers to find Kingo and his family but it took six years for Diane Doran-Sheehy (responsible for saving this piece of the forest that Kingo and his family live in) to originally find and name them.
Then I came across this sentence, “Even though all gorillas found in zoos around the world are western gorillas, little is known about their behavior in the wild.” I just started weeping, right there on the plane. The image of this complex and incredible animal in a concrete cage, without his family, without his swamp and trees, without his six miles to roam and wander, without the peace and privacy to take his daily nap, just broke my heart. We don't even know enough about his behavior in the wild to even ATTEMPT to replicate his environment. How, I ask myself, how do we justify that? I had to force myself to try to think of something else, anything that would keep me from crying.
A few days later I was reading an article about the natural science museum finally opening this year in Golden Gate park. It's an impressive and beautiful building with a living green roof and solar panels, it's being touted as a highly responsible ecological building and yet, they are going to feature 38,000 animals in their aquariums. Granted they're growing coral and using local seawater but still, a space the size of this building must surely be much smaller than their complex and vast natural habitat, the ocean. I understand that we want to educate people about animals but I just haven't seen the data to support the theory that animals in captivity on display have helped any in the wild. By my count, the wild animals of this world are vanishing at an extremely alarming rate.
Then I was in Berkeley with a friend of mine. We passed an older hippie guy on the street with a clipboard. He was wearing the kind of socks that have toes in different colors, and Birkenstocks. He was collecting signatures for a farm bill; I know the one because I’ve already signed it and because I’m a Humane Society member. I thanked him and walked on. Another guy passed him and I heard the hippie ask him to sign a petition for a bill that would allow farm animals to move around in their cages. The guy just shook his head and moved on.
About an hour later, we were in a furniture store while my friend was looking for a bed. I heard the hippie in my head asking for help so the animals could “move around in their cages.” It made me sick, I thought it’s like asking for less torture, more humane captivity, the irony is ridiculous. I can’t believe we have to fight for this, that we have to try to convince people to care enough to not torture their animals before they kill them. I was overwhelmed with grief and had to leave the store. I couldn’t stop crying and my friend didn’t even believe me when I said it was because of the animals.
A few weekends ago, I almost volunteered to be that person collecting signatures. Can you imagine? What would someone do if they didn’t sign the petition and I started crying? I wonder. So today I was reading an interesting article in The New York Times Magazine about morality. The author says that we are genetically moral creatures. That we universally believe in certain principles that are possibly biologically motivated to keep us alive. Universally, we feel that it is wrong to harm others, we believe in fairness, we value community and loyalty, we respect authority and we revere purity. Where it gets tricky, however, is in the ranking and weight of those morals.
There are instances, for example, where certain cultures allow harm to those who are considered impure. Or where fairness is denied to those who disrespect authority. The upholding of these morals can be wildly divergent even if the basic motivation is the same. Liberals, for example, tend to rank fairness much higher than purity or loyalty. Also very interesting, was the fact that certain behaviors cycle in and out of morality.
Smoking has become morally bad since the emphasis on second-hand smoke whereas getting a divorce is more or less accepted as a fact of life. And certainly we have widened the net of who deserves humane treatment as time goes on. Slavery, once an acceptable economic practice, is now reviled pretty much the world over. I have a dream, in the words of our Martin Luther King, Jr. that someday we’ll consider keeping an animal in a cage as barbaric as selling a man on an auction block.
A McKinsey survey published in The Economist showed that out of 15 major issues of the next five years, the environment is number 1 globally but the top issues after the environment are safer products, retirement benefits, health-care benefits and affordable products. These are pretty much the same things we've always been concerned about. Ethically produced products is near the bottom of the list and I assume that the welfare of animals falls in that category. So we want to protect the environment, meaning that we don't want to die, but aren't really concerned about everything else dying? I think we feel that we can't care about everything, that we have to pick our battles.
So I’ve learned that there isn’t anything wrong with me and there isn’t anything wrong with everyone else for that matter. It’s just that our moral barometers are all set differently. Looking at my five spheres of morality, by far the largest would be harm, followed by purity, which I think is where my love of nature comes from. The spheres of fairness, loyalty and authority are there but much smaller. If I had to choose between having money for retirement and seeing animals roam free, I'm afraid I'd choose the animals over myself.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
I propose a name change: Original Cells
Last week, an exchange student from Spain that was a friend of mine in high school emailed me. Thank goodness he’s fluent in English, as I have somehow not absorbed Spanish through osmosis. I live in Los Angeles and still can’t figure out how that has not happened, but that’s another story.
He and his wife are having a baby (affectionately termed human-cub but soon to be known as Nicolas) in about a week. He’s become a big fan of the blog and has written me some very interesting think pieces of his own. When the baby is born, they are going to be preserving some of his umbilical stem cells in case a) the research provides a viable method of reversing diseases that are currently fatal, degenerative or untreatable and b) the boy develops one of those diseases.
It’s an expensive procedure, harvesting the cells, and they have to be preserved which also costs money. Richard Branson, the Virgin billionaire, is leading the charge on collecting and storing of stem cells in a bank for private citizens. It’s really no different than a blood bank. Stem cells (which, can I just say are in dire need of a name change - ghastly!) can be collected from the amniotic fluid of pregnant women and the umbilical cord of newborns.
But scientists need a LOT of cells for research. The discussed solution has been to grow embryos and then kill them for the cells or use already destroyed embryos from abortions. Understandably, this is controversial but the majority of the American public supports the research. President Bush has twice vetoed to expand federal funding on religious/moral grounds and scientists are hoping the next president will deliver in '08.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, on the other hand, has allocated state funding for it and California is now leading the US research. Scientists are universally convinced that stem cell therapy is breakthrough technology and are taking steps to ensure ethical responsibility.
Finding a way to continue the research drives scientists like William Hurlbut to find a way to get the stem cells without killing babies. He gave a presentation to the Vatican on his homegrown sacks of cells (and hair, teeth, nails) that aren’t human but provide the cells. It’s still enough to make the average person squeamish but this is an elevated level of concern from how we've used animals for decades in the name of science and human health. (The article about Hurlbut is a fascinating read, by the way.)
My Spanish friend was commenting on the fact that given the option, how could any parent say no to preserving these cells for potential future use? Could you imagine your child developing a life-threatening disease and flashing back to five or ten years ago when you decided not to spend the money on what could have been the cure? But what if it’s a bunch of hype like being cryogenically frozen when you die?
Critics say that the procedure is taking advantage of parents since the chance of a child developing a disease treatable by this method is 1 in 10,000, 1 in 20,000 or between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 200,000 depending on which article you read. That sounds definitive. By that rationale, we should immediately outlaw insurance and arrest everyone profiting from the biggest rip-off on the planet. Without the research, how can anyone say what diseases stem cells might be capable of treating?
The fact is, scams are rarely this high profile and don’t usually involve overwhelming support of the scientific community. Regenerative medicine has already proven to be extremely effective and the days of relying on government to regulate progress are over. Across national and political lines, the public is casting ballots of support with their purchasing decisions. Individuals, like my friend, are creating our future and I for one am grateful. The chances are when stem-cell therapy becomes available, it will be someone else's cells that will save the life of someone you love.
He and his wife are having a baby (affectionately termed human-cub but soon to be known as Nicolas) in about a week. He’s become a big fan of the blog and has written me some very interesting think pieces of his own. When the baby is born, they are going to be preserving some of his umbilical stem cells in case a) the research provides a viable method of reversing diseases that are currently fatal, degenerative or untreatable and b) the boy develops one of those diseases.
It’s an expensive procedure, harvesting the cells, and they have to be preserved which also costs money. Richard Branson, the Virgin billionaire, is leading the charge on collecting and storing of stem cells in a bank for private citizens. It’s really no different than a blood bank. Stem cells (which, can I just say are in dire need of a name change - ghastly!) can be collected from the amniotic fluid of pregnant women and the umbilical cord of newborns.
But scientists need a LOT of cells for research. The discussed solution has been to grow embryos and then kill them for the cells or use already destroyed embryos from abortions. Understandably, this is controversial but the majority of the American public supports the research. President Bush has twice vetoed to expand federal funding on religious/moral grounds and scientists are hoping the next president will deliver in '08.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, on the other hand, has allocated state funding for it and California is now leading the US research. Scientists are universally convinced that stem cell therapy is breakthrough technology and are taking steps to ensure ethical responsibility.
Finding a way to continue the research drives scientists like William Hurlbut to find a way to get the stem cells without killing babies. He gave a presentation to the Vatican on his homegrown sacks of cells (and hair, teeth, nails) that aren’t human but provide the cells. It’s still enough to make the average person squeamish but this is an elevated level of concern from how we've used animals for decades in the name of science and human health. (The article about Hurlbut is a fascinating read, by the way.)
My Spanish friend was commenting on the fact that given the option, how could any parent say no to preserving these cells for potential future use? Could you imagine your child developing a life-threatening disease and flashing back to five or ten years ago when you decided not to spend the money on what could have been the cure? But what if it’s a bunch of hype like being cryogenically frozen when you die?
Critics say that the procedure is taking advantage of parents since the chance of a child developing a disease treatable by this method is 1 in 10,000, 1 in 20,000 or between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 200,000 depending on which article you read. That sounds definitive. By that rationale, we should immediately outlaw insurance and arrest everyone profiting from the biggest rip-off on the planet. Without the research, how can anyone say what diseases stem cells might be capable of treating?
The fact is, scams are rarely this high profile and don’t usually involve overwhelming support of the scientific community. Regenerative medicine has already proven to be extremely effective and the days of relying on government to regulate progress are over. Across national and political lines, the public is casting ballots of support with their purchasing decisions. Individuals, like my friend, are creating our future and I for one am grateful. The chances are when stem-cell therapy becomes available, it will be someone else's cells that will save the life of someone you love.
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