*hiccup*
Did someone fill the studio with nitrous oxide? Everyone is giggly tonight!
I'm afraid I couldn't hear the opening monologue this evening, as
people were laughing too loudly. However, I did manage to catch via
studio monitor Bullet's part of The Word, which I can only assume once again relates to your strange mating rituals.

Hmph. Genetic engineering. I know nothing about it, other than feeling that
anyone who thinks gr-eagles is a good idea should be taken out and shot. As
such, I'm allowing an audience member who's apparently studying the ethics
of biotechnology to talk about this.

Medicine is going against nature the bitch? By...using aspirin,
derived from trees? And 60% of land sure is cropped, but not-argh! I can
already tell Prof. Lee Silver is going to be one of those scientists who
irritate me.

So, Stephen is talking about the August 2001 approval of existing lines,
which was said would be dozens, if not more. The problem with this theory is
that in reality, the useful lines approved in that August were, by many
counts, at one dozen, if not less. Obviously, you can see the problem -
classic or not, those stem cell lines need to be, upgraded if you will.

Prof. Silver gave an absolutely god-awful analogy about the size of embryos,
talking about how small they are, and that our President believes that of
these individual embryos are a unique human life - and that if you were to
put them all in a cup and sneeze, then inhale one, you'd be guilty of
cannibalism.

Stephen had the right question - just how often does that happen? This is
the number one problem when hard scientists attempt to address any
potentially ethical issue in medicine: they abstract out so far that the
examples are not only pointless, they're ludicrous.

Nevertheless, Stephen plays along, and asks him about the dead skin cells
from the body. Silver says it's the same thing, which leads to the common
response of "wha?" in me. I believe for Stephen, that phrase translates,
loosely, into "you're saying [if I stopped loofahing] I'd have babies on my
arm?"

Silver says that he's making the converse argument, that skin cells and
embryos are the same thing - no life, just cells. This, of course, is an
incredibly simplistic argument that doesn't acknowledge things like
religion. While of course, this is part of Silver's argument, that
biotechnology and religion are at an impasse in our country, This is
definitely true and I'm not even going to try to argue it. But what Silver
is apparently missing is a humility gene of his own, that might allow he is
wrong in his idea. Instead he takes the hard science is right tact,
nevermind the fact that in this very silly interview, he even acknowledges
that things have to change as knowledge changes.

Thank you, audience member!

...and don't tell Stephen I told you, but you should see the number
of lemons I had Tad deliver to his dressing room while the show was filming!
Perhaps then he might get the hint to apologize to me for the sheer terror
of the MagnaMorphs.

G'night, everybody!

Labels: episode commentaries, Lee Silver, liberty