As a "Buddhist", would you donate your body to science?
Hamsaka
goosewhispererPolishing the 'just so' Veteran
Actually I have two questions, this is only the first one.
As a Dharma practitioner, is science and the progress it gives us unfortunate birthed beings something to make your contribution to, for the sake of reducing or eliminating the suffering of all sentient beings? You don't have to donate it for medical research, you could donate it to the Body Farm to help promote the furtherance of forensics. There's lots of uses for your dead body when you are done with it. Growing a tree with it is very nice, but kind of selfish, considering how many more individuals than your descendants donation will benefit.
The second question, as a Dharma practitioner; if money were no object, and the capability available, would you have your children, as embryos, given genetic tweaks, grafts, additions and deletions so as to give your child the best possible immune system, physical strength and aesthetics, intelligence . . . ? It certainly has the potential to reduce suffering for the child(ren). It would certainly address the Buddha's old bogey, 'sickness' and 'death'. Even today there are lines of research working on how to extend human life. There are living beings on this planet who are for all intents and purposes, immortal, like some species of jellyfish and lobsters. They only die when they are killed. So an eventual death is not an automatic consequence of being birthed and alive in samsara.
Are there any "Buddhist" objections to either of the above? Why?
Comments
Sorry, my last two links don't work and I don't understand why, I've had this happen before esp with Wikipedia (the second link), but the third link is from a blog. ??? glitch for Linc to know about?
Yes, I wouldn't mind, though my body has been subject to quite a lot of self-abuse over the years and would probably now be of limited use!
Especially my brain.
1 - Yes I would.
2 - No, I wouldn't.
Why? You know me, I ask honest questions
(bwahahaha) Our children's children will have these choices to content with, unless we find more ways to dispose of our corpses than burying or cremating them due to space and energy conservation. And if you CAN, why give birth to a precious child with a bad poker hand of genes? Or, why not give them the available 'boosts' that will ensure they are as intelligent as they need to be to do what they really want to do? Or have the physical traits that are well known to provide benefits, however ridiculous? Beautiful people just do BETTER in life, it's not rocket science. And if other parents are making the choice for genetic modification, your child's peers will leave your child in the dust, by choosing NOT to, you are choosing more suffering for your child, however relative and irrelevant to Buddhists.
To @SpinyNorman:
Your tired brain could provide excellent conditions with which to study the human condition, as most of us have very tired brains
, and tired brains lead to various problems we might be able to solve that prevent tired brains, and so on.
To the second question, I neither have nor desire children, so I can only answer "no" in the abstract. My concern is that it could--and this may be a slippery slope--turn into something akin to eugenics. Beautiful people doing better is more due to a larger cultural view of who is deserving of success instead of the actual work undertaken by that person. I'm not comfortable with placing the onus on the individual to conform to beauty standards whilst ignoring cultural, social, and economic structures that privilege certain populations at the expense of others.
Apologies if that is nonsensical. I'm only on my second cup of coffee.
Yes I would, because if any part of me can help any part of anyone else, in any part, i think I'd be a good candidate, given that I don't drink, I don't smoke, and I'm quite a fit and healthy specimen, all things considered....What they do with my remains is entirely up to them - even if they DO end up using my cranium as a flowerpot and growing sempervivums in it.
I don't know about Buddhist objections but I'm going to be brutally frank (or frankly brutal) about this:
We may be a little too clever for our own good. Once we have eliminated all conditions detrimental to health, cured all diseases, stopped genetic faults occurring - where are we all going to live?
It seems a fatuous and cruel thing to say, but once upon a time, certain conditions, led to certain death; they were both insurmountable and unsurvivable.
Since science, research and medicine has improved to such an extent that some of these previously-fatal situations are now eminently treatable, "Natural Selection" has been relegated to something that happens to every other species on the planet, except Man.
We're "Playing God" .
And I think, in some ways, we're making a complete hash of it, no matter how good or noble the intentions.
1-Yes. How I manage my death changes regularly, and will continue to change as my children get older and those relationships change. If it is important for them to have a piece of me, so to speak, lol, I will honor that. And I would prefer to have a say with exactly how my body is used by science so it aligns with my beliefs.
2- I don't know. Right now, no. Nature has a balance, and for all the wonder, awe, and amazing things that go on, there has to be a balance of things not so wonderful. It seems like common sense in a way to do all we can to alleviate suffering. But as federica said I think, what do we do with all the people then? We already have a problem with too many people. Having more and more people born but not ill and dying (horribly as it is) will just create more suffering for those who are here because resources at this point are still limited.
As people, our suffering, our challenges, are part of what makes us who we are. I think we have to save ourselves from the rounds of suffering by doing the work to get out of it. A "free ride" is rarely a free ride and almost always has unintended consequences. Even though it brings suffering, nature has it's own perfect system to keep things in balance. The problems we have with being out of balance are due to human intervention, and I don't trust our self-serving ways to focus on that balance in the future either, at least not yet. Life has a balance, and that is illness and eventually death. Suffering. The only way to escape the suffering life brings is to escape life. Not cheat death.
I love that you are being brutally frank. As to 'where are we all going to live', that might have been my THIRD question. Would you emigrate to a new planet (all things a 'go', considering finances, great beautiful new safe world, blah blah blah)? It's just too speculative at this point, but YOUR point is magnificent.
Indeed, where in the hell are we going to put all of these long-lived, healthy gorgeous people that won't be dying off any time soon?
Here's where I don't agree with you @Federica. I have a much more positive attitude toward our 'cleverness', and see that it will continue in a more positive way than a less positive way. I'm not denying our cleverness can be destructive, even in a final way, as the US and USSR were poised to do.
The upside of the tech that lead to nuclear warheads is the cheap and relatively safe nuclear power that does not pollute the environment like coal and other fossil fuels, not to mention tip us into a global climate catastrophe. There's upsides and downsides, and so far, I see MOST of the time, a tendency toward the upsides. I trust 'us' more than I don't.
As for natural selection, is there anything essentially negative that it's been pushed aside by our current level of medical technology?
Finally, what do you mean by "playing God"?
@Rowan1980 said:
Even though you choose not to have children, and even though those of us who have are not going to be making these choices any time soon, our children's children WILL BE. This kind of progress is happening whether our personal beliefs line up with it or not.
I think our generation bears SOME responsibility in how we raise and prepare our children and grandchildren to cope with these kinds of choices. We can choose to ignore this 'responsibility' for various reasons, but then again as Dharma practitioners, 'we' are not in this alone. The Dharma does not begin and end with our brief time of awareness between our life and our death. This is where I get the idea we are 'responsible', in some way, to prepare our children for life, just like we teach them manners and educate them in school.
Yes I would, and they can used the part of my body that doesn't used to grow a tree, I think it's very mindful to leave less footprint in the earth as possible...
Yes I would
@Karasti said:
No matter how much we tweak and improve, there will never be a free ride, not in samsara
. Like you said, there will be uncountable 'unintended consequences' we can't possibly predict, much less cope with effectively. By effectively, I mean with less suffering rather than more.
So I hear you saying that it is more important to 'do the work' and get the heck off of the cycle of life, death and rebirth than it is to pursue improving the quality/quantity of life as we have been doing for the last 150 years? At some point, ought we to 'stop' all the improvement? It's continuing whether it's important to you and me or not! You and I had children who we trusted would grow up and live to have their own children. A hundred years ago, that was not the case. A hundred years from now, what will be taken for granted, the way we take healthy living children for granted?
Does it, really? Does Nature really have it's own perfect system that is more beneficial for us, in the long run, than any technological improvements we keep coming up with? I personally don't see Nature as having a perfect balance, per se. Apparently 70K years ago a supervolcano erupted in Sumatra and caused a massive extinction event that wiped out humanity down to less than 2000 individuals. So I get the impression we are the LEAST of Nature's concern when the planet needs to blow off some pressure
. We humans can't count on 'nature's inherent balance' if an asteroid comes barreling in, or the Ebola virus mutates and becomes airborne amongst humans.
I completely agree that we humans have set off many imbalances that are biting us in the butt, however. But unlike you and Fede, I seem to have more faith in our overall intentions. It may be completely unfounded . . . but it appears to be worth my vote when I look around. And that includes all the human caused atrocity. If I lived in eastern Syria I'm sure I wouldn't have this 'optimism'
. But when it's 'good', it's pretty good.
And we cheat death as long as we go to the doctor, put our seatbelts on, avoid poisonous snakes . . . we are always 'cheating death' and at least for me, I don't see much difference when it comes to research to extend human life spans.
I'm interested to hear more about why you would support or get involved with genetic manipulation to prolong life or make healthier smarter babies etc etc
I don't think we hold a place of importance any more than anything else in nature. We think we should, which is why we constantly try to alter nature to suit us, and damned how it affects the other beings on the planet which depend on that natural balance. That kind of humans attempting balance is always at play here, (where I live on a small scale but as also in the microcosm so it is in the macrocosm) and it's a joke.
We have a tentative balance here between wolves, deer and moose. The hunters like to kill the moose and deer, but so do the wolves. So the hunters and wolves compete. The hunters are angry the wolves are lessening the deer population so they want the wolves hunted to lessen their population so they have ample deer to hunt. They got spoiled a few years with weak winters so they got more deer, and now we had a few hard winters, so fewer deer. Keep in mind the vast majority hunt for sport and do not NEED it for their food. Some do. But not many. Hunters in this state kill 250,000 deer every year. Anyhow, so it is with most things. Alter the natural course so that we benefit over everything else. Kill the wolves so we have more deer for us, because we deserve them and the wolves don't. I don't agree with that line of thinking. Simply our being here and living alters things enough, as do other beings. I'm not all for extending human existence as long as we possibly can. If an asteroid wipes us out, then maybe it was for the best. I think it is limited thinking to believe we can only exist on this planet.
I have one kid who is autistic and another who is diabetic. We have these types of conversations when the topics come up in the news, and so far, both of them would opt to keep their "disabilities" rather than have been born without them. Of course, they don't know anything else. But they feel that they have a different appreciation, a different view of life and others seeing things from their point of view.
After all, all of our "advancements" are simply out of a desire to cling to our lives. Which is exactly what we are working not to do.
I think I've already signed the donor card but it really depends on how and where I die.
If it's found, go ahead and use it but don't expect me to wait around in a hospital bed if I'm able to boot around.
The first of two objections I'd have would echo @federica and the over population sentiment.
However, I don't see that as being a problem for long. There was an astronaut on TVOntario the other day telling kids that the children being born right now will probably be the ones that colonize Mars.
I still think we will get half way through that mission when we hit a breakthrough in travel that will leave Mars unfinished and send us to other solar systems where we don't have to spend so many resources fixing up the place just so we can breathe.
The other objection would be that we simply are not ready as a species to take that step. There would be heavy discrimination and fear against the new advanced humans (Homo Superior) and possibly a mindset of slight arrogance within.
I think the best thing to do is to keep on keeping on with the inoculating process until such a time as we knock out greed, hunger and our little resource problem.
If the last 50 years can be used as comparison to another 50 years prior, I think we can safely assume that the next 50 years are going to get pretty weird.
@karasti;
I don't see it that way but I can see your point for sure. I see it like we've been building up towards awareness for at least 14 billion years as the known universe and a few million years as life on this planet. We've evolved through natural selection and suffered many hardships but have still persevered with a sense of wonder.
As Carl Sagan said, "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself"
I've often wondered why we are so curious but then I remember that it's all just the sharing of information... We are natural born explorers.
The suffering Buddha would rid us of aside from the pain of aging and sickness is just growing pains. Teenage wasteland...
I've heard that waking up is not the end.
Awsome questions, btw @Hamsaka!
I also wonder about the values of the people who, for the time being (near future) could afford to do such genetic modifications. It comes at a steep price that insurance won't cover for probably quite a long time. So who among those on the planet would have the opportunity to do so? Mostly the people who we (in my pessimistic opinion, lol) do not need more of in this world.
No question there...
But if (and sure, it's a big "if") we get to the point where we have beaten greed and hunger on this planet... And all one would need is the proper education, what would you say then @karasti?
I'm not trying to poke, I'm genuinely curious... I think I was a jerk to you once and apologize for that bad day.
LOL if you were, I don't remember it, so no worries! We all have our days.
I really don't know. If anyone had access to the information and procedure, I don't know if it would change my feelings on it. Is not wanting a "perfect" child in some sense a type of greed anyhow? It's a hard thing to consider. It's easy for me to say today "no, I wouldn't change a thing about my kids." But that's in hindsight. Without the benefit of hindsight, would my answer be the same? I really don't know. Perhaps science could guarantee me a child who wasn't diabetic, but it would go against my current morals to create a designer child.
Despite what evidence exists on GMO foods, I still don't know how I feel about those. So GMO babies are a tough one for me, lol.
Some of it is just my curiosity. A lot of the problems we have concerning health, we actually cause. If science could have told me that we might have a diabetic child and they could influence those genetics, environment and lifestyle could still cause it to develop. I think all the billions we spend on treating, curing and circumventing problems is largely better spent on preventing them to start with. We have more control over our genetics that we believe, in what we pass to children and grandchildren and so on. So why do we need medical science to control all of that? Medicine aids our body in it's own natural processes. That's all. We can learn to do a lot of it ourselves but we don't. Why?
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This is why I love you both here!
Don't know if this is 'buddhist' or not. But I won't be needing my body then anyways so I might as well give it away.
Devil's Advocate here . . . We really don't need the drug addicted/damaged babies born one after another to a mother so mentally ill and drug addled herself that she can't plan appropriately from one moment to the next, either. One of the kids I take care of is so damaged by his intrauterine environment he'll never be 'older' than a month old infant. He has four or five siblings. This is extreme but not uncommon. The people who CAN afford this as an elective procedure may be snots and elitists but they are likely to be quite functional and JUST as likely as you or me to 'find' the Dharma and practice it.
There is a population of very damaged people having lots of children all over the world, so while I see your point, I also see that it is only one of many such points that in themselves don't seem so important all lined up together.
This WILL (for a time
) create an 'elite' group of humans, and this is very concerning to me, too.
What would be ideal is how we do vaccinations. They are available to everyone in spite of cost. Genetic mods to prevent diabetes and other metabolic disorders, degenerative disorders, and other common health problems ought to be AS available and encouraged as vaccinations. In that way, they'd be available to all. Anything over and above that is questionable . . . but what will we know and be capable of doing in 50 years? There are things we now take as 'part of life' that won't need to be tolerated. There is no ethical reason FOR us to tolerate sickness, disability if it can be prevented. That doesn't invalidate our loved ones who have a sickness or disability. If we could heal your son's diabetes and eradicate juvenile diabetes from the face of the planet, we should.
Isn't THIS an effort toward the cessation of suffering?
Should those efforts to cease/mitigate suffering ONLY be "Buddhist" things? If the Buddha were born today, and became a well revered wise person with the same message, I imagine he or she would embrace modern medicine as another of the many things we do to eliminate suffering.
@Ourself said:
The extrasolar planets we have discovered are so far away we might as well forget about traveling there by modern means (even the ones currently being developed). We'd have to literally bend space/time or be 'on the road' for thousands of years.
But we HAVE to, just to perpetuate our species, right?
For Buddhists who's goal is Nirvana and gettin' off the cycle altogether, perpetuating the human species seem . . . conflicting. In theory. But IS it? How can we be SO sure we're not doing the same thing fundamentalist believers are by rejecting the 'evils' of modernity? Jesus didn't even have a bicycle. The world is going to hell because of all the technology!! We need to get back to basics . . . (whatever those are, I suspect none of us here really want that!).
@karasti said:
I've had my suspicions about GMO food too . . . but then I read that every species of corn, wheat, soy, rice are genetically modified from their 'wild types' and have been for thousands of years (and have been being further modified all that time). We've genetically modified our pets and livestock. What is the essential difference between our 'breeding' and selecting we've been doing for thousands of years and direct manipulation of the genome in a laboratory?
Is there a difference? How much of a difference? If there really are differences that matter, how much DO they matter?
The ONE objection I have to GMO-type crops is how farmers are forced to buy more seeds every year because last year's seeds have been modified and won't fertilize
I really object to that!
I think some of my 'point' is that what we THINK is "Buddhist" is a bunch of crap
what we 'assign' to Buddhism, or assume is beneath the aegis of "Buddhism" is kind of a boneheaded and cramped way of defining "Buddhism".
We (including me) have a tendency to revere ancient texts and teaching, and in that is a tendency to seek 'purity', which often leads to literalism. It's obvious in the Judeo-Christian tradition, think Amish as our best 'extreme' example. We believe we get 'closer' to the essential purity if we reject modern advances in medicine and technologies. I know I've thought this. But it's really ridiculous on further scrutiny. Why can't 'the Dharma' be everything that is happening right now? That is silly we even have to ask the question, but I've thought it and asked it a plenty . . .
Even though we have been doing it, I don't necessarily trust it. And cross-breeding plants (to me) is different than lab manipulating human genes. We have a dog who obviously is a result of genetic modification. Boxers certainly never existed in the wild. But as a result, she is more prone to a shorter life span, cancers, thyroid conditions, hip displaysia and other things as a result of the breeding that resulted in her existence.
There is a distinct possibility that my son has diabetes because of how we, as humans, have already altered the food (or other environmental)landscape. Altering his disability could easily result in things worse than what he deals with already. To me, further altering the food supply (or other things)isn't necessarily the answer when it was likely part of the problem. I'm not saying GMO foods caused his diabetes. Just that our attitudes of man-made stuff being the solution to everything is contributing to the degree of illness we have on the planet right now. Since I believe we have caused a significant part of the problem, I don't trust our current ability to solve it.
I like Alan Watts take on all this and I feel it sums up my feelings beautifully.
Mankind has always felt a need to conquer or fix nature. They feel different from nature or external to it.
Like it's broken and we have to bend the world to our will.
The whole time not realising we ARE nature. It doesn't need fixing. The only thing that needs fixing is who exactly we think we are.
The universe/god whatever you want to call it, created us. We think as humans we are born into a broken world and have to try and fix it. It will never happen because people are to busy trying to fix the world and not asking themselves exactly what or who am I.
Trying to help prevent people suffer. Medically. I can understand. This is good.
Trying to make people more intelligent or aesthetically better? Not keen on this idea.
"As a "Buddhist", would you donate your body to science?"
Yes, I can't see why not...After all, you(consciousness) are not going to take any physical 'baggage' with you when you go, so why not donate it so that the baggage plus consciousness left behind will perhaps be of benefit in some way...
@karasti said:
Yes! Unless there is a manufactured problem. And I mean 'manufactured' as in describing a problem that didn't exist before we (usually) caused a problem, then needed to fix it, and so forth. I can understand some of the genetic modification if say the world's source of rice were hit by a new kind of fungus (which we probably inadvertently caused by our farming/harvesting
). There are genetic modified salmon now, for some reason that had to do with a salmon disease (?) and gene mod tomatoes.
I agree in principle with no need for aesthetics or IQ tweaking . . . unless it actually impairs my child's choices and opportunities in life. There are probably choices our ancestors made about other things you and I take for granted, things our ancestors felt compelled to do just to stay up with the Joneses. The choice to do a Timothy Leary and 'drop out' of mainstream culture is another way to cope with change that is unwelcome, but my problem with that is my child may not wish to 'drop out'. Through the choices I made by my preferences, what if I dealt a bad poker hand to my kid? This IS kind of pushing it, but when our grandchildren are of age and pushing us around in our wheelchairs and they ask us if they should get the latest gene mod covering obesity, anxiety and depression . . . I'm gonna say go for it. We ain't gonna fix Samsara this way (and I'd come right out and say that). I have no doubts whatsoever that Samsara has a replacement 'suffering' up its sleeve for every thing we 'conquer', that is evident all around us! The issue I hear from you Karasti is the unintended consequences, the ones we can't possibly predict, that could (and sometimes is) be worse than the original problem.
Birthing a child with a deadly metabolic disorder ain't exactly Nature at her finest
Neither is cancer or inherited mental conditions. Nature doesn't get it right ENOUGH for us, we cherish our offspring far more, it seems, and need them to live, every single one of them, and be perfectly healthy and happy. Nature could care less, or so it looks like from the vantage of people with degenerative diseases.
THIS ^^ and it goes along with a lot of stuff @Karasti has said. This has to be the 'balancing agent', so to speak, it's why the Buddha's message goes beyond the time and place of his life. Pursuing 'excellence' and 'perfection' through technology has to be tempered by a particular brand of 'holistic health', including contemplation of some kind. I see our society right now as being terribly unbalanced, too much doo dads and not enough contemplation and 'being'.
I attributed your last sentence to Karasti, woops. Anyway, I'm not keen either, off the hip, but if it's not MY life in the discussion, I have to consider being more open minded for the sake of relationship.
So true. But then we deny ourselves the opportunity to be dug up by some future archaeologist, surrounded by all of our 'stuff' like the Egyptian Pharoahs . . . there goes my dream of being displayed in a museum
Becoming a tree is a wonderful gift.
Becoming a science project, organ doner or piece of performance art is also a potential gift.
In Buddhist Tantra just as in transubstantiation it is sometimes permissible to eat the Soylent Greens.
I am not sure if freeze drying, taxidermy or mummification is available for those who wish to sell their corpse to anyone who wants a unique gift for the 'Buddhist or Sangha who has Nothing/Everything'
Last summer I came across a dead fox in an inaccessible part of a clients garden. Rather than alert the usual health and safety concerns. I just allowed the fox corpse to be eaten, decay, feed a rather nice shrub he was under etc. Last time I looked everything was back to normal and no one was inconvenienced.
Emptiness is foxy, Fox is a Gonna. (based on an original dictum of the Mahayana)
Well, as I said, we're already on route to the colonization of Mars and yesterdays cutting edge is todays antiquity so I don't think it's going to be a problem to spread.
As long as we don't decide to spend all our resources killing each other over the limited resources of this one planet. Like Hawking has said, right now we literally have all our eggs in one basket.
Did Buddha teach the extinction of life?
Did Buddha teach a regression or a progression of awareness?
I would ask those Buddhists looking to end the cycle why Buddha walked with us as long as he could.
I would ask those Buddhists that do not wish to leave a footprint why the footprint was the first symbol of Buddhism.
Buddha did not want to topple the wheel, he just wanted to turn it.
Thich Nhat Hanh says " technology is like a runaway horse: it carries us, but we don't know where it's going."
I agree wholeheartedly with this statement also and feel our survival depends on the outcome of a kind of race between knowledge and wisdom.
I don't think I have anything else to add right now, but thank you @Hamsaka for bringing this up! Many people brought up good points to consider, and I have no doubt my view on the topic will change over time. There is always an initial reaction and then a settling as things work out, and I'm sure that will happen with this, too. I hope whatever happens with all this new technology, that we as humans proceed cautiously and not with the wrong values and goals in mind. I saw the story about the UK moving forward with something along these lines, so it will be interesting to observe that.
As someone who has dissected self-dontaed corpses to medical science I can say that learning to cut into a dead body was a lot easier than cutting into a living body, and I am glad I was given that experience. Cutting up living people is not at all like cutting up meat for your dinner. You have to treat the person with respect, and ensure you have done everything in your power to know and understand what you are doing, and do no further harm (as the hippocratic oath determines). There's nothing like a dead person lying still and motionless offering up there deepest anatomy and inner secrets within the stiff remains of their physical being, to instil a deep respect for what you are doing as a medical professional.
Sadly, some of my colleagues never seemed to exhibit that same sense of regard, and sadly some still don't seem to demonstrate it towards the living living people...
"it's nearly time we had a little less respect for the dead, an' a little more regard for the living." – Juno Boyle, Act II
'Juno & the Paycock' by Sean O'Casey.
To the first question, I donate gladly and willingly all my organs to any living being who might be in dire need of whatever my physical skandha has to offer that is worth taking.
@anataman's last point is quite valid, but I'd still feel better knowing that my organs can help prolong another human being's life quality, rather than simply ending chopped up in the hands of medicine students on a table.
As to the second, I have to give it a thought.
If there was a genetic disease running in my family, and any tweaking on the part of science could put my descendants' conscience to rest when the time comes for them to plan for an offspring, I suppose I would.
Which does not mean that I'd like to play God and deliberately agree that we have to systematically eliminate every malformation under the sun just for the sake of adhering to a false ideal of perfection.
Right, so that would be a good reason...
Might this not be someone else's 'good reason', though?
I mean, if it's ok for your family/descendants, then surely the same would apply for the families/descendants of those affected in this way, no?
I think it would be really difficult to set a boundary for what is acceptable to change or prevent, and what isn't. What is one person's molehill is another's mountain. My son that has autism, also has asthma. For him, both have genetic components. So, do we prevent the autism and keep the asthma? His asthma is fairly mild, but even in that case, he requires daily meditation to keep him breathing and any respiratory virus can land him in the hospital and it can in rare cases kill a person, too.
Really, if you look far enough, almost all of us have issues, many genetic, that cause is strife in our lives. What is the boundary and who gets to decide? Are we only talking conditions that are untreatable with current means (ie things like cystic fibrosis and cerebral palsy)? High functioning autism versus more debilitating autism? There are just so many fine lines. Who makes those decisions?
What I meant is, sometimes you have certain diseases that run in a family and you might consider having that factor changed, if technically possible, if that fact deters people from having children when they have the wish to have children.
Not arbitrarily deciding to abort the baby you are carrying because you have just been announced that your baby will be Down, for instance, or has five fingers or some one-shot malformation.
And just to be clear, by my comment I am not judging women who choose to do so.
@Dhammadragon said:
If that's what genetic modification is used for, some idea of perfection, then I totally disagree with it, too. That is a false ideal, it's irrelevant and harmful in so many ways. The first way I can think of is that if everyone is tweaking genes to get rid of overly large noses so everyone looks like a runway model, my kid will grow up UGLY, even if they aren't, because I didn't tweak their genes so they would have a supermodel's ace. In that situation, I would feel compelled to allow genetic modification so my child didn't have the NEW disadvantage of having a normal face (read: Ugly) in a world of 'perfect' faces.
Getting rid of diseases or congenital conditions, I'm all for that. Getting rid of THOSE things are legitimate measures to reduce suffering. If you are born, you will suffer, it's already too late; so ya might as well utilize the latest available technology.
We already do this. Our grandmothers were probably born at home with a midwife, who's training consisted of either being naturally good at it or apprenticing beneath a senior midwife. Nowadays, the tech allows us "4D" portraits of our unborn, and a very safe birth for mom and baby. If your grandmother's mother were told that someday every baby will be visualized before it was born, she would have been shocked, and maybe appalled. Unborn aren't MEANT to be seen, that's why God doesn't have them develop on the outside of your body. And so on, you get my drift
All good points . . . of the hip, I guess the person who makes those decisions MAKES them into CHOICES for the rest of us when they identify the regions where 'autism genes' reside and can give your 3 day old embryo a gene splice to eliminate the 'autism genes'.
My grandson is autistic, and I can't wrap my head around how HE is some kind of genetic 'woopsie!'. The autistic adults who are now speaking out are upset at Autism Speaks, who's goal is to find a 'cure' for autism. They want a 'cure'. The autistic adults speaking out say they don't FEEL like walking talking birth defects. I don't wish he was 'normal'. He is himself. My daughter and her partner feel the exact same way, fortunately for my grandson. He'll grow up without the added burden of his parents wishing he was 'normal'.
With Karma and rebirth being what it is, you may have already been an Egyptian mummy
Not everybody with degenerative diseases thinks that way. Some are thankful and happy with their lives. They go about making a difference in the world through their show of bravery.
Unfortunately with this attitude we will always then have attachments and try to fix nature , to bend it to our will. All the while thinking we are something other than nature. It all boils down to how we view ourselves.
I never thought of that. If I can hope, I'll hope it was ME in a previous life that they found encapsulated, still meditating away, in that statue. If I am 'still meditating', somewhere, that's like having a steady income from interest
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As a nurse I've had long talks with people who genuinely accept their condition, and can count all kinds of blessings from it. They continually amaze me and the rest of us. What they prove is that there is great healing power (and just plain old power) in deliberately taking an optimistic stance. I know 'optimism' can mean slightly different things to different people, but it's the only word I could come up with
Imagining a life without their condition, on the other hand, is not something I'd ask, not ever. And I think they respect themselves enough that this is not a question they'd take seriously for themselves. But if they had a choice to make for their own child, they'd choose to have that problem area 'fixed' in the genome. So 'both' sides are true and important, and there is no diminishing their inspirational lives.
You bring up something else . . . how we see ourselves 'separate' from nature. It depends on how you define 'nature', but reading between the lines, you and I agree on this. We aren't separate from Nature. And neither is our wishes or desires to IMPROVE upon nature. I think that is a point that only comes up in discussions like this.
If we are, essentially 'nature itself', and we come up with desires to reduce the rather common 'mistakes' nature can make, that desire is just part of nature. It's not 'apart' from nature. Perhaps it is nature seeing itself for the first time in the consciousness of human beings, nature reaching a place where nature can seek to improve itself. It's a thought, anyway.
I do like that we are nature expressing itself and I do think that's true in some regards. I do however feel there is 6 billion humans on this planet who don't know who or what they are. Essentially. Deep down.
So when we try and fix nature, that is desire or clinging to our projection that we are egos living in a body/mind.
This is wrong view.
I wonder how might we feel about these sort of topics if we wake up. Would there still be a problem? Or is all these so called problems giving our minds too much value.
But we ARE egos living in a body/mind. I'm not sure how that could be 'wrong view' but I might be missing something more subtle.
Perhaps egos living in a body/mind is not all that we are, or is a restricted and incomplete description that leads to wrong actions. That last part makes sense. And seems to be the whole story to a lot of people.
And to think of even MORE than the billions of humans already enjoying samsara, all piling up on top of each other is alarming to say the least. I'm not a prophet but I'm going to guess this is exactly how it is going to be until we need certificates to become parents or an asteroid makes the point a moot one.
If YOU were Awake, and needed a kidney transplant, do you think you'd approach the idea any differently than you would right now?
To answer your last question, I'd go for the transplant if it was offered, but if i couldn't get one, it wouldn't matter.
TNH is undergoing extensive therapy at present to try to regain both his speech and movement.
While I am making no claims on his behalf, or mine, that he is enlightened, he's unarguably a pretty 'advanced' individual, in terms of 'Practice'. I think we'd all agree.
He's not turning down treatment in any fatalistic, 'death is inevitable anyway' kind of way. he's going with the flow.
In the US you can have the designation of being an organ donor on your drivers license. So I hope and trust that if any of my parts can be utilized they will go first to those who have the greatest need. Also that I shall be well and truly done before any harvesting begins.
My body is being used by science while I'm still alive. Science in this case being a huge pharmaceutical company running clinical trials on a new product.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01813422
So, while the drug company will make a fortune from this drug if it is successful, and it will likely be too expensive for the average guy at first anyway, it has potential to be a game changer in the treatment of coronary artery disease.
The other incentive for volunteering for this study is that all participants, whether they took the medication or the placebo are entitled to two years of the actual product for free. If it works as they are hoping/expecting it to, it could return the arteries to a much healthier condition.