Side-effects of Cloning, Agri-Genetic Engineering? -

Nothing is more obvious than crossing the road of some perfect strangers who assert: „genetic engineering is safe", „Let us eat some genetically modified food! ", or cloning researchers setting up their „milkmaid-account", or „beer-account": ‘You must not forbid a technology already therefore, because abuses may follow’ - according FAZ a very shortsighted, if not even a stupid sentence, „because it lets drop every argument of technology risk assessment with the comment: That isn't our beer" .

Mr Christian Geyer of the FAZ reproaches the GMO - researchers with „blue-eyed abstraction" , because research can itself not place simply on the standpoint: Misusage cannot cancel out the utility value. „As global legitimation formula this sentence is not up to date in the era of large scale industry and networked indirect results". The right of usage defines itself about its possible misusage, and admittedly the more this misusage arises and the more it reaches into important dimensions. „That apply especially in the intercourse with an highly powerful biotechnology" which can irreversibly intervene in nature. Just take a look at all the genetically engineered plants and animals, as well microorganisms and often described side effects - last but not least on honeybees and cultural landscape.

The president of the german Science Foundation Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker described the therapeutical cloning as a „wrong way" (FAZ from 13. February 2004). In issue 1/2003 of new Online magazine „Natural Sciences" we had pointed out the wrong premises in genetic engineering . According to FAZ, Winnacker 's pleading for self-restraint because of insight in the conceivable technology risks are not shortsighted but farsighted. „Research is always premises leaded and in this sense never result open. The distinction of way and wrong way belongs to professional routine of science".

Less professional decisions are usual in politics and science: the chairman of the research committee in the Bundestag (Federal Lower House of Parliament), Ulrike Flach (FDP) for example gives her „that’s not my beer" by saying: „If therapeutical cloning prove to be feasible, we should allow it in Germany".

Let’s listen to other voices from politics and science, for instance to the chaiman of the Union in the Bundestag, Thomas Rachel: „It shows, how careless the Federal Government has acted, as they prevented with their vote behaviour on EU - plane a comprehensively clone prohibition and supported an adjournment. Only one single vote - the German - had been decisive. Researchers in South Korea had now the time, without international proscription by a convention, to clone a humanly embryo and to harvest parent cells". The president of the Federal Doctors Chamber Jörg-Dietrich Hoppe said: „ we must stop the feasibility delusion and quickest possible come to an international clone prohibition. We can not permit it, that embryos get breded as raw material suppliers. If we place humanly living in the arbitrariness of commercial disposition, then no ethics of the world will be able to rescue us".

2004 March 03

More Information:
Full verson in: Natural Science 3 (1) 2004
See also article on "third industrial revolution" Part III
 
 

Today more and more therapy forms are being established, which in former times, when people were even more related with animals and plants, particularly in agriculture, had been put into practice more unconsciously. Since decades it has been worked with soul care needy human beings on farms, or also in gardens near psychiatrical institutions. From the Middle Ages the monastery gardens are well known. Comparatively new is the concept of the garden therapy. „Starting in Great Britain and the United States, where for thirty years adequat courses of studies are offered, finds the concept also to in this country more and more attention" as the freelance science journalist Stefanie Rudolph/PhD in the FAZ reported.

In some therapy institutions are being offered up to 2000 therapy hours per year; the task is bring patients with psychical disorders after their interior estrangement from the world literally „back to earth again". Garden therapy applies to Alzheimer - and dementia diseases, and also psychical problems shall be subdued on this ways, if not get cured (Rudolph 2003).

A garden therapist tells it exactly: „People must be picked up by what they do know and like. At least 80 percent of the people enjoy gardening. Patients, which oppose all other therapies, join the therapy, if they shall take care about plants: awaking responsibility for the creature, that operates most" (ibid).

Less acquainted is maybe, that the new Apitherapy - though paradoxically often sticked to the traditional reductionistic way of looking at things in the medicine - fundamentally also represents a kind of „beetherapie". Besides enormous healing success regarding for instance sicknesses of the old-age medical science (geriatrics and gerontology) by the bee - products as propolis, pollen, honey, beeswax and bee venom, is the so-called „beetherapy" as it is offered in courses at our Virtual Global Academy, not to be neglected. The honeybee is one of the few „domestic animals", that has retained still to large extent his natural life form  - at least, if that bee colony belongs to a beekeeper, who is keeping the bees according our standards. That means: the beecolony lives in harmony with nature. The human being, operating with the bees, get encouraged, to take part at this harmony. The workings at the beecolony, the working with beeswax, propolis, honey, pollen means far more than only „awaking responsibility for the creature ": It awakes the interest and the love for the animals. Beside it awakes even at junger patients the interest, after one time to keep oneself beecolonies - even today something that need to be appreciated most.

2003 November 19

More Information:
Full verson in: Apiculture2 (4) 2003
Courses in social Medicine/Apitherapy
Practical Courses in "Bee-garden-therapy"

At Goethe's times one couldn't yet produce technically a Homunkulus (test tube - embryo), because nature philosophy was still established in medicine and not dispeled by natural science; latter happened first from 1838 onward, among other by the chemist and founder of the laboratory medicine Johann Franz Simon (1807-1843) and Johann Joseph von Scherer (1814-1869) (1).

The "Faust" - Homunkulus had therefore one more great advantage in comparison to his counterpart of today: he could adress his producer as „daddy ", „demand from him caution and care in the intercourse and affection and show a narrative talent" (2).

Today comes a Minister of Justice and dispossess the Homunkulus simply of the dignity of man. The dignity of man be admittedly inviolable according the German Basic Law and new - commentary of article 1. „But whom shall the dignity be up to - touching this question the Constitutional Minister is not afraid to. You pushes for one moment Wagner aside, moves a step to the Phiole (a kind of test tube) and says to the embryo: ' article 1 isn't written for you '. The dignity of man describes Mrs. Zypries therewith as something, that will be assigned from outside, by the 'respect of the characteristic value of each person ', the possibility self determined life '. For the assignment of dignity of man has the test tube - embryo, according to her, the same 'perspective' as for a development to the full developed human being. Especially without perspective appears naturally this perspective, if in clinics, or tissue laboratories large quantity of embryos are produced, whose purpose of existing is being surplus " (FAZ).

How far have we already moved away from nature acually? Does the human being descent to become a machine, as La Mettrie had asserted, or a creation robot, as it is carried out below?

It makes no difference if in the jar, or in the womb: the embryo be always an human being on increments. He has, as the FAZ recently pointed out, always „merely the perspective ", to be a grown up. „Especially this perspective is the central criterion for his constitutional law protection, adored Constitutional Minister! " (3)

What does it mean else, than that „the dignity of man in general" is put into question, as it is called in the editorials of the FAZ end October („the Greens refuse the Zypries - forward movement to genetic modification. „juristic tricks" / also the Union refuses / approval at the FDP"). Thereon nothing can get changed also not  „with the help of jurisdictional tricks ". Who wonders, that the minister is backed by the chairmen of the research committee, Mr. Flach? However, still the majority in Germany is against, if Mrs Zypries changes  „human beings into material " (4). That attests also the Bavarian Minister of Justice: By the protection of the dignity of man there's no space for balancings, or relativizations. „If we begin, to soften this protection without emergency, we open door and portal for arbitrariness" (5). - For example the therapeutical cloning.

It is prodigious, that exactly a country like the Unites States, in which rarly a cash crop is grown that can be described as a GMO free, - even the President obviously prefers GMOs in the food; is  against cloning at all. The American ambassador by the United Nations, John Negroponte, said in an interview with the FAZ from  October 2003, he wants to encourage the Federal Government of Germany, to prepare the way together with America for a convention , which „ostracizes this unethical technology worldwide." in Germany each form of the cloning is already through national laws strictliy forbidden. Negroponte said, there's no compromize, one have to decide therefore either to be against it or not. In case of need the convention has to get pursued further „without those states, who would permit cloning for scientifical and medical purposes, said Negroponte. Thereto count under other countries Great Britain, China, Singapor, Israel and Sweden ". The No of the American Government regarding therapeutical cloning be absolute, because embryos would be generated to medical purposes and slain. He and the majority of the comunity of nations want a comprehensively clone prohibition - the Belgian design against it contains no clearly reprobation of the therapeutical cloning, but let all open (6).

Since nature philosophy has been dispeled from medicine and one only concentrates on a supposed „molekulare definition of life" (7) , it becomes more and more difficult for some scientists and politician, to judge correctly in questions, till now no compromizes were existing. One gets lost in playing with expressions like „Who shall be God, if not us? " (James Watson, deoxyribonucleic acid - decoder), or one does handicraft by making short work of the prototype of a so-called „creation robot" which is able to produce new viruses and bacteria, as the gene technician Craig Venter (decoder of the humanly genotype), recently has demonstrated (8). He wants to build living out of molecules and in doing so, he gives a new definition of life. The discours is already about a „Revolution of the human being as a creator"  - and he is supposed nearly to be the inventor of a „Plan to retrieval of the world" (9) . - questioned only if possesses more knowledge and wisdom as his predecessors, whose  „inventions" have contaminated entire landscapes in the United States, Canada and Argentina with GMOs.

2003 November 18
More Information:Full verson in: Natural Science2 (4) 2003