How comfortable are you with the scientific manipulation of food? Not long ago, irradiation was a big issue. Now, the process is endorsed and recommended by the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. Click here to read the CDC's FAQ page on food irradiation.

Do you remember when the concept of cloning was first introduced? The Scotsman (online edition) reported on April 12^th that U.S. and Japanese scientists had cloned both beef and milk cattle. Further, the article, "Cloned cow milk 'safe'" reports that testing shows that the meat and the milk from the cloned animals is undistinguishable from products from "normal" (what is "normal" anymore?) animals.

In a Frankenstenian development so weird that it sounds like science fiction, Japanese scientists have also created a type of rice that contains a gene from the liver of human beings. They took the gene that would enable the rice plant to tolerate herbicides used to kill weeds. Of course, the liver is the organ that filters poisons out of the human bloodstream. See for yourself in "GM Industry Puts Human Gene into Rice" by Geoffrey Lean for The Independent (UK). Rice pilaf, anyone?

Designer Babies

The British House of Lords ruled in late April that it is legal to produce so-called "designer babies" to produce siblings of sick children who carry the genes that would cure their illness. Egg cells are conceived in vitro (literally, "in a glass," in a dish or a test tube) in a laboratory outside of the mother's body. Then the fertilized eggs undergo a process called "pre-implantation genetic diagnosis" or PGD. (See this explanation of PGD biotechnology from the staff of the Center for the Study of Technology and Society in Washington, D.C.)

Once an embryo is identified that has the desired gene, it is implanted in the mother's uterus to produce a child. That child's umbilical cord is rich with stem cells that can be harvested and cultured as needed to treat the sick sibling.

In this way, mothers do not have to be "inconvenienced" by giving birth to fertilized embryos that do not have desired genetic code. The unacceptable embryos are discarded or, if the parents wish, donated to science for stem cell research. The U.S. government's National Institutes for Health has an excellent and informative Web site on Stem Cell Information, explaining the basics of the subject.

Huge ethical barriers stand in the way of such science that seems so marvelously convenient and a great breakthrough in the treatment of disease. For those who believe that life begins at conception - as we in the United Church of God believe - it is taking a life to fertilize an embryo and then discard it, whether it is thrown away or used for research.

Advocates of this rapidly advancing science counter that many embryos abort naturally, if there is something wrong with them. First, no one can predict what embryos a mother's system would abort and which would come to term. Obviously, many children are born with diseases. Additionally, it is nothing short of playing God to decide who lives and who dies, whether before or after birth.

Proponents argue further that science is able to detect the potential for serious illnesses in embryos and to avoid heartache and potential health risks to mothers by simply denying the embryos a chance at birth by never implanting them. Further, creating healthy babies would save society a great deal of money in healthcare costs.

Should cost cutting or even the desire to spare parents from heartache be the drivers that determine where science goes in the manipulation of life? Somewhere along the way, science went beyond pushing God aside and now seems intent upon taking over for Him.

The AP reported in late April that a University of Reno researcher has a heard of sheep that contain "partially human livers, hearts, brains and other organs." Scientists champion this and similar experimental animals created by injecting them with human cells as "vital to ensuring that experimental drugs and new tissue replacement therapies are safe for people."

Paul Elias is the reporter who wrote "Genetic Mingling Mixes Human, Animal Cells." He wrote:

In the past two years, scientists have created pigs with human blood, fused rabbit eggs with human DNA and injected human stem cells to make paralyzed mice walk.

How far is too far to go down this road?