Freaky control

I definitely learn something new every day. As a college student, I like to think that I learn more than one new thing most days, in fact. Rarely, however, do I learn something that really shocks me, or "blows me away," so to speak. Last Tuesday was a very rare day. Twice, in a single day, I was confronted with such information. Twice as I was confronted with images depicting the subject of my instruction, I was hit with a nasty, gut-wrenching feeling, which eventually led to a sort of dazed state of bewildered pondering (something I end up in too often, perhaps). This pondering has inspired me to write yet another blog. Now that I've gotten started, I wonder if my wife will ever catch up... O:-)

So what were these two disturbing things? I'll start with the first, chronologically speaking, which I learned of during my nutrition class. Our last few lectures leading up to Tuesday were focused primarily on healthy body weight and composition. As a first branching off from this topic, we discussed overweight and obesity. Most people, I think, know the risks associated with these conditions, but health professionals, I have noticed, have a way of making them known in a more frightening way. As it turns out, several of the leading causes of death in our country are directly caused by, or closely related to overweight and obesity. The list of health problems caused by excess body weight is long and gruesome. Yikes. None of that was really new to me, though, because my health professor last semester did a pretty good job of driving that point home. After discussing issues with dangerously high body weight, however, we moved to the opposite end of the spectrum.

Because unhealthily low weight is not an issue for nearly as many people as overweight is, I think most people tend to be more ignorant of the risks associated with it. I recently read somewhere that studies indicate that having a weight on the higher end of "healthy" is probably less risky than having a weight on the lower end of that range. That came as a bit of a surprise to me, and I suspect that it would surprise most people. Well, surprisingly or not, it turns out that there are some very serious risks associated with low weight, especially when it results from lack of sufficient food intake. So it should make sense that the focus of our lectures quickly turned from low weight to eating disorders.

Now, eating disorders aren't really new to me either. I've known about them, to one degree or another, for most of my life, and even a couple of previous classes I have taken have touched on them. I think most people basically know what anorexia and bulimia are, at least some basic level. For the sake of clarity, I'll give a short definition of each, in my own words. Anorexia Nervosa is, most basically, a disorder in which an individual simply does not intake sufficient nutrients, and thus loses dangerous amounts of body mass. In most cases, anorexics simply eat very little food on a daily basis. Others may eat what seems to be a "normal" amount of food, but exercise so vigorously and so often that they "burn off" far more than they consume. Bulimia Nervosa is a bit different. Bulimics typically eat a sufficient amount of food, and some actually eat far more food than they should. After eating, however, bulimics generally engage in one form or another of "purging." This may involve forced vomiting or extreme use of laxatives, in most cases. Either way, the effect is that most of the food eaten does not have a chance to be absorbed by the body before it is expelled. Interestingly, this does not always lead to loss of weight, for somewhat complicated reasons, but it certainly leads to many other difficulties.

Alright, so all of that is rather sobering to read about, but not so shocking to me. As I mentioned earlier, it was an image that really hit me. I've seen images of incredibly thin people starving by no choice of their own. Those are very tragic images, and had their own powerful effect on me when I saw them. The pictures of anorexics that my professor showed to the class on Tuesday, however, were different. They looked like nothing more than a thin sheet of skin stretched over a skeleton, and it was hard to believe that they even contained enough space to hold organs. The fact that the people depicted were still living when the photos were taken is almost incomprehensible. Horrific would be a good term to describe them. Those pictures alone would be enough to make me cringe, but in context they were downright sickening. Not only had the people in those pictures been the cause of their own awful condition, but they believed that it was DESIRABLE, and even sought to be MORE THIN. Supposedly anorexics have a distorted self-image which prevents them from seeing themselves as thin as they really are. I think it must be true, because I can't fathom how someone could look in the mirror and see what I saw without being downright scared. I doubt that my description is enough to really impress upon anyone the severity of the condition I'm describing, so for those who can stomach it (that modifier is a warning), you can see similar images to the ones I saw simply by doing a google image search for "anorexia" or something similar.

Before I go any farther in my discussion of anorexia, I want to talk about the second shocking thing I learned on Tuesday.

My biology lab is a little bit scatterbrained sometimes. We just finished covering introductory genetics, right after our lab on genetic engineering. I'm not sure whose idea that was... In any case, before genetic engineering, we were discussing stem cells. Before I even started reading the lab I was thinking to myself "Oh boy, here we go with a political issue..." and I was right on. Our lab exercise involved a quick pick at some stem cell slides, and a very silly procedure in which people were supposed to get "character cards" and answer questions about their thoughts on stem cell research "in character." I was disappointed by the lab itself, but I did learn a lot from the reading we were assigned. I have been aware of the stem cell issue for some time now, to one degree or another. Apparently, however, I didn't understand the issue as well as I previously thought. For the sake of those who may be in the same boat as I was prior to my lab reading, I'll give a little brief summary.

Stem cells are generic animal cells which are capable of "differentiating" into more specific cells. When an egg is fertilized, it becomes a zygote (the earliest stage of an embryo), which is essentially a single stem cell. That cell then grows, divides, and multiplies by a process called mitosis, which is the basic means of cellular reproduction. After several divisions, the zygote is referred to as a blastocyst, which is basically a tiny ball full of stem cells. If it is allowed to continue growing, the stem cells will differentiate into the various cells that make up the animal (bone cells, muscle cells, brain cells, liver cells, etc.), and eventually mature to the point of being a recognizable animal. Alternatively, scientists could open up the blastocyst and remove the stem cells from it. The embryo, as an embryo, dies when the blastocyst is opened up, but the stem cells can be kept alive, in much the same way as many cells of the human body survive for some time (though short) after the person dies. The stem cells from the embryo can then be grown in a petri dish and made to differentiate into specified cells to be implanted into another creature, where they will combine with that creatures other cells and do whatever function they are made to do. This could potentially be of great benefit to the creature receiving the cells, if that creature's original cells do not function properly. However, since the DNA of the stem cells is different from the DNA of the recipient, they may be completely rejected by the recipient's immune system. It has also been observed that tumors can sometimes be formed following implantation.

There is a way to overcome the potential problems of this "embryonic stem cell therapy," as it is called--and this is what really amazed me. There is a procedure referred to as "therapeutic cloning," which is both fascinating and somewhat frightening to me. In therapeutic cloning, an egg is collected from some donor of the same species as the recipient of the stem cells, and the egg's DNA is removed, so that it essentially becomes a DNA growing cell without any DNA to grow. DNA from one of the recipient's cells (a skin cell will do) is then removed and implanted into the empty egg. If all goes according to plan, the egg, which is now "fertilized" by the DNA, becomes an embryo of the creature, which can be grown to produce stem cells which are exactly the same as the recipient's cells genetically, and can therefore be implanted with greatly reduced risk, or even chemically induced to grow into an entire organ to be implanted! Incredibly, that same embryo could be implanted into a surrogate mother, and grown into a new creature, which would be genetically identical to the creature whose cell DNA was implanted in the egg. This latter procedure is referred to as genetic cloning, and has (somewhat) successfully been done with sheep.

This just absolutely baffles me. The idea of taking a skin cell, for example, from one creature, and an empty egg from another creature, and combining them to creature a completely new creature just flies in the face of my understanding of reproduction.

As it turns out, even matured animals have stem cells in many parts of their bodies, some of which are still capable of differentiating to become any kind of cell the body needs. Scientists have recently discovered that these stem cells can be removed, caused to differentiate, and re-implanted in a process very similar to embryonic stem cell therapy, with the important difference being that nothing has to be killed in order for this to occur. There is no chance of the cells being rejected, because they came from the original creature, and the procedure has been successful in many patients already.

Most of the debate surrounding stem cells has to do with embryonic stem cell therapy. Our government has banned federal funding for embryonic stem cell research because it involves the destruction of human embryos, which some (including myself) view as human lives. This does seem to be an incredible contradiction, since our government allows (and even pays for) embryos much older than those used for stem cell research to be aborted, but it is a step in the right direction, I suppose. In any case, there are many scientists who insist that the government should allow funding for embryonic stem cell research because of the potential cures which could be developed by it, and because they apparently are not convinced that other forms of stem cell therapy are adequate.

So my shock and awe have lead me to some troubling questions. Why do some people voluntarily starve themselves? And why do so many in the scientific community insist on research which requires the death of human embryos?

The answer, I am sure, to both questions, is control.

There are actually many convoluted reasons why people become anorexic, but a unifying theme among them is a desire to have control over their bodies. Some anorexics turn to their eating disorder because they suffer from abuse, and have been tragically bereft of control over their bodies. Many others are simply type A personalities--perfectionists--who inherently seek control over any and every aspect of their lives. For all of these people, having control over food and body weight becomes addictive and they desperately hold on to anorexia as if their very life depended on it, when, in reality, they are putting their lives in jeopardy.

Similarly, many scientists today (and perhaps most scientists throughout history) seem to be obsessed with finding ways to assert human control over nature. Certainly many good things have come from this desire, and I don't suppose that it is completely wrongheaded, since humankind is (graciously) given to subdue the earth. As with most things which are of themselves proper, however, this desire for control is subject to sinful corruption. I doubt that many modern scientists would appreciate being compared to the infamous Dr. Frankenstein, but the similarities are rather striking to me sometimes. In the quest to have control over life, some scientists have gone too far. Their obsession has lead them to blindly sacrifice the most fragile of human lives for the sake of others. A friend of mine has recently pointed out in his own blog that this is both unacceptable and insane. Surely life is a great gift from God, and we should practice careful and sincere stewardship over it--especially those of us who are given the great responsibility over the lives of others. To become so concerned with preserving earthly life that we disregard the Law of the Lord, however, is to defeat every good purpose, and is damnable!

Harmful obsessions with control are not unique to anorexics and stem cell researchers, however. Every person has it to one degree or another, I think. I confess that I can be a bit of a "control freak" myself at times. The problem with this is tied back to the same sort of thing I discussed here previously, namely, idolatry of self. God alone is the Author of life, the Creator of the heavens, the earth and everything in them, visible or invisible. We are His creatures, the works of His hands. How foolish it is to attempt to usurp authority from Him! We are foolish, sinful people, and bound to fail any time we assert ourselves over and against God's will. He desires all that is good for us, especially life, for He created it and gave it to us in the first place, and His will is to sustain it and provide it with everything it needs. In fact, God is very protective of the life of His creation. He does not tolerate those who threaten it and despise His commands concerning it. If we were wise, and feared God, we would not dare to fail in the stewardship that we are given. Yet we have all fallen short.

But the law is not God's final word, and it isn't mine either. I believe that anorexics sinfully abuse their own bodies in their refusal to eat, which is also a rejection of God's love. I also believe that embryonic stem cell researchers and all those responsible for the death of human embryos are committing horrible and grievous sins. God hates their sins, as He hates mine, but He still loves them. He Has taken their foolish sins on Himself, and paid the price for them all, and to this very day He offers His own forgiveness, life, and salvation. Even to all evil people He continues to offer daily bread--even if they choose to refuse it. He does not desire the death of a sinful scientist any more than He desires the death of a sinful embryo.

Let us all repent of our detestable sins then, fleeing from our foolishness and wickedness. Let us then receive those gifts which God freely gives us, and in receiving those gifts, let us learn to love God's will, and His precious gift of life!