Health – Christian Renaissance Movement

Have you heard of CRISPR? No it’s not a breakfast cereal… It’s a fast, accurate, and cheap means of changing DNA. It stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats.

If you haven’t heard of it, then you need to: this is a HUGE deal.

There is a protein in bacteria called Cas9 which helps defend against viral attacks. (Yes, bacteria get viruses, too!) The bacterial DNA can take the viral DNA and store it in a special place (CRISPR). When the virus attacks a second time, RNA loads Cas9 with the viral DNA. The loaded Cas9 scans the bacteria’s DNA to find the new viral DNA that has infiltrated it, and it cuts it out – a little like a DNA antibody. Personified, that means the cell says, “I’ve seen this change before, it’s a mistake, I need to replace the change with the original information.” Then it sends a message to the Cas9 protein with the bad DNA sequence to modify, and off we go.

The Cas9 protein can be taken out of bacteria, be given a DNA sequence from any kind of living thing, be injected into any other living thing, and it will make changes in that organism based on the information it was “programmed” with.

Got that? You give Cas9 a DNA sequence you want to modify, inject it into an organism, and it will make the changes. It is fast, it is accurate, and it is CHEAP.

Okay, this is a bit of an oversimplification. There’s more to it, and no you can’t just walk into the right lab and get a shot that will make you grow wings… yet.

There are obvious benefits to this kind of procedure. CRISPR might provide us with a cure for cancer, AIDS, any number of genetic diseases, and could help us generally keep healthy (like by increasing our metabolism or improving our eyesight). Once it is really nailed down, it is very likely that a couple of $12 shots at the minute clinic will be able to get rid of your asthma, or Alzheimer’s, or cerebral palsy… forever.

But… With great power comes great responsibility.

uncleben — Thanks, Uncle Ben. Wait a minute – was Spiderman CRISPR’d?

Unfortunately, the 21st century West is not very responsible. Where might CRISPR go wrong?

Well, what color eyes would you like your child to have? Should we bump up his IQ while we’re at it? Hey, you’re an athlete, maybe we can give him long legs and enhanced muscular growth as well, so he will be sure to be athletic too. Just an extra $300, please. Oh, you’d like him to have Shiva arms and a third eye, because you’re into that kind of thing right now? You’ll have to go down the hall for that.

Anti-aging cream? Psh. Take the right injection, and your body will actually start DE-AGING. As long as you don’t get hit by a truck or something, you’re good to go for another hundred years… a thousand years… indefinitely, perhaps. Or at least we will try.

Let’s say you’re running a poor nation and, well, need things to go more “smoothly.” So you put something in the water to make all your citizens have a defect that only you can provide the fix for. And you will only provide it to a person if his taxes are paid on time, he doesn’t have too many children, and he votes for you again. (This could be done now, but not with nearly the same ease and dramatic effects.) Meanwhile, you are pumping your soldiers and police full of testosterone 2.0…

halo-mccjpg-bc17eb_1280w — It’s only cool if he’s on your side. You might look like an alien once the Great Leader poisons you.

And once such genetically modified people reproduce (whether they have been helped to be healthy or have been “upgraded” or “downgraded” somehow), those screwed up genes get passed along. At that point, there’s no stopping it. And we have no idea what that will actually mean.

Here’s a video helpful for understanding more:

This technology is developing very quickly. The Church needs to get ready with a response, ASAP. Where is the line for modification, and why? If life is a good thing and death is to be avoided, is anti-aging wrong? What is to be done in terms of people who have already changed themselves by addition – how far does the obligation extend to have such a thing undone? Is this technology really worth the risk of irreversible changes to the gene pool which we don’t even know the danger of? Could there be an obligation to use this technology to prevent certain kinds of diseases? These are the kinds of questions we have to begin asking.

Get ready. It’s coming. And once it comes, it is here to stay.

Post by: Eamonn Clark

Main image: Cas9 in the Apo form

Main image source (modified): By Ben.lafrance – Template:Own rendition of the crystal structure solved by M Jinek et al, published in Science 2014, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37224108

So guess what? Turns out some researchers in the Netherlands think more countries should legalize pot.

captobv — Captain Obvious, of Hotels.com fame

For those who think flying to Amsterdam (or Colorado, etc.) to indulge in the herb is just fine and dandy, let’s do some thinkin’.

Principle 1: Creation is good.
Principle 2: Not all creatures are equally good.
Principle 3: We ought to avoid evil.
Principle 4: Rastafari is a false religion.

Humans are ontologically higher than rocks, plants, and animals. We can use them, even to their detriment, if they are beneficial enough to us. Jesus was not a vegetarian. And yes, Brother Carrot and Sister Lettuce are okay to kill, unless it is out of sheer disdain and spite for their existence as creatures of God.

But Uncle Bud is a little different, because when we harvest him, it’s usually for the sake of affecting our bodies in a way that suspends our intellect.

Eat-ay ad Thomam:

The sin of drunkenness, as stated in the foregoing Article, consists in the immoderate use and concupiscence of wine. Now this may happen to a man in three ways. First, so that he knows not the drink to be immoderate and intoxicating: and then drunkenness may be without sin, as stated above (Article 1). Secondly, so that he perceives the drink to be immoderate, but without knowing it to be intoxicating, and then drunkenness may involve a venial sin. Thirdly, it may happen that a man is well aware that the drink is immoderate and intoxicating, and yet he would rather be drunk than abstain from drink.

That’s from the Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 150, art. 2. Wine stands here for any intoxicating substance… One might not know a substance to have intoxicating effects, and so there is no sin in such drunkenness (unless its use was immoderate for other reasons). But if one knows something to be potent, it is another story. But just how drunk is “drunk?”

[The third kind of man] is a drunkard properly speaking, because morals take their species not from things that occur accidentally and beside the intention, but from that which is directly intended. On this way drunkenness is a mortal sin, because then a man willingly and knowingly deprives himself of the use of reason, whereby he performs virtuous deeds and avoids sin, and thus he sins mortally by running the risk of falling into sin. For Ambrose says (De Patriarch. [De Abraham i.]): “We learn that we should shun drunkenness, which prevents us from avoiding grievous sins. For the things we avoid when sober, we unknowingly commit through drunkenness.” Therefore drunkenness, properly speaking, is a mortal sin.

So there is still a mystery… How intoxicated must one be before he “deprives himself of the use of reason?” Let’s remember a few things though before we shame the Angelic Doctor for being obscure. First, he expects a student to have read all the text which precedes this Article. That would give one a better idea of what he means. Second, the Summa really is just a beginner’s crash-course. It is not meant to be exhaustive. In some articles, this is more evident than in others. Third, it’s unlikely St. Thomas had much firsthand experience with drinking to provide us with more subtlety… When Albertus Magnus is your professor and Bonaventure lives on your hall, you’re inspired to “rise above the influence,” as it were.

tumblr_m0o7czl36O1rrutr7o1_500 — “Bonaventure Shows Thomas Aquinas the Crucifix,” Francisco Zurbaran, 1629

However, we know that some of the more austere saints occasionally indulged, such as Charles Borromeo and John Vianney. And of course, the Lord did as well, as He so famously pointed out in Matthew 11:19. Since potent substances will technically have some effect no matter how little is taken of them, we can say from this alone that it is not evil in itself to use intoxicating substances.

Then there is the principle of totality to keep in mind. Later in the same Question, Thomas alludes to this by saying a physician might tell one to use drink to induce vomiting – but since lukewarm water works too, that should be used instead. However, if it didn’t (and we hadn’t discovered Ipecac) then it would be fine. This is because the greater health of the body is worth the temporary loss of reason… That’s also why it’s not a sin to plan on going to sleep each night! And while there is violence done to the body and soul when, for instance, a gangrenous limb is removed, it is for the sake of the entire person. But this too should be moderated by wisdom, since not every ailment is worth doing violence to yourself. If you get occasional leg pain, that doesn’t mean you should cut off your leg.

So anyway, how drunk is drunk? How high is high? It is so difficult to say because of the problem in trying to quantify a quality. “It’s when you feel like… you know, drunk.”

We won’t solve the issue of exactly where “the line” is today – maybe another post with some ¡HARDCORE SCIENCE! – but perhaps we can lay down some guideposts based on Thomas and basic research.

Certain drugs act far more quickly than others. THC (the active ingredient in marijuana) acts more quickly than alcohol, based on the popular conventions of consumption. That is a big deal.

Reason helps us to distinguish the true from the false. Once you have trouble doing that, it’s time to call it a day… If sober people around you start laughing at everything you say, it’s probably not because you’re witty and charming, it’s because you’re diminishing your material brain’s capability to interact with your immaterial intellect (AKA you’re becoming drunk). And so on.

If you’re starting to forget stuff that you shouldn’t forget, then that’s another sign your faculties are slipping. So put it down.

When you feel like doing something really dumb that you normally wouldn’t, STOP and don’t do that much again. Once you know that tequila makes your clothes fall off, then kiss it goodbye. It’s better to enter into life without a bottle of Patrón than into Gehenna with all you could ever drink. (And Tequila burns even without being on fire…)

If you can’t walk right and are slurring words, then your brain is shutting down. Same story.

So no hard answers here today, but basically the faster and stronger the drug, the less morally safe it is to use. AND, if one uses any substance for the pleasure of changing his mental state in a way that diminishes its capacity to execute its proper function, as distinct from some some other effect, this too is a red flag… We should not delight in an unnatural state!

All this would make the average consumption of pot pretty bad.

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