I heard on the news the other day that researchers in the U.S. managed to create a working rat heart from stem cells. A step that brings us much closer to achieving the creation of human organs through the same technology. Basically the human replacement organs would be grown through pigs that share a very big percentage of similar DNA with humans.

I am not against stem cell research or cloning for that matter, but still I can not escape the moral questions that arise. Can we play god or not. Can we mix human and pig DNA (as close as they might be) without having “pigman” jump out of our mouth from time to time. And then what? If we can save somebody with a heart transplant, can we also enhance somebody so that she can withstand harsher conditions. Later, can we mix DNA to create human-tiger “beings”, or something? And what will we call the failures? Mutants or humans?

When we go down this road, no matter the arguments that will arise, one thing is sure: we will have opened Pandoras box. We will no longer have any moral ground on which to object to ANY type of scientific research. Daddy (God) will have retired and left us the keys to the store. He will no longer be responsible if it burns up while we are on a “coffee break” nor will he be around to give us advice.