This is a movie review. Bear with me.
Disparate sources of information lately keep bringing me back to the same topic. Senator Frist changes his mind, in an astonishingly incoherent manner, about fetal stem cell research. Cloned dogs are hanging out with cloned cats, so to speak, comes the news out of South Korea. This evening I watched an interview on a local TV news station, WESH in Orlando, of a man who had been in a persistent vegetative state but obviously is not now, as he answers the interviewers questions and expresses his desire to play with his children. The TV news declines to mention that he was PVS. Again from South Korea, doctors and scientists candidly discuss the unavoidable path from fetal stem cell research to human cloning to harvesting organs, as they gather to research how to do just that. In news from the UK, a man who is ill and knows he is going to get worse is told by judges, in advance, that he will be put down like a dog when his doctors feel he has become too burdensome.
So what is the FreeMarketNewsNetworks legal commentator doing pondering such things in print (or electrons, as it were)? After all, they dont pay me to write about stem cell research or to write movie reviews. Then again, they dont pay me to write legal commentary either, but thats another topic altogether.
Ive learned that discussing fetal stem cell research with Libertarians can be interesting. For instance, my talented sister-in-law is currently the intern for a rather well-known national talk show host, who is widely regarded as a powerful libertarian voice on the radio. That radio talk show host has opened up his website for my sister-in-law to write articles about this and that. The other day she wrote about fetal stem cell research, taking a position opposite that of her benevolent boss position (that is, she has problems with it). The hate mail poured in. Im still trying to get a handle on what the official Libertarian position might be on fetal stem cell research, and so continue with this article at my own peril.
Now comes the movie review. If you have not seen The Island, starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson, and intend to, then dont read any further. Im going to spoil it for you, big time. Since the movie has tanked at the box office, I dont feel any guilt at giving some of its secrets away. I happen to think it is one of the most important motion pictures in several years. Mind you, I didnt say one of the best movies, as it has its flaws the product placements are annoying and nonsensical (why would you advertise to people who have no choices?) and for some excessive action film clichés. However, I loved the film as a whole and see it as a rare inadvertent and certainly accidental Hollywood morality tale. Really, Im astonished this one ever got the green light for production.
Its like this. Reminiscent of movies like THX 1138, Logans Run, and Soylent Green, the film starts out by introducing us to people who live in a very structured and controlled environment. The viewer might be forgiven for buying the premise that this is so because the world has been taken over from a horrible pathogen and that where these people live is the only safe place on the planet, other than The Island. The Island is sold to the characters in the film as the last pathogen-free place on earth, a good place with sun and sky and water, and all of them want to go there. The problem is, The Island doesnt exist. It is a lie told to the clones (oh, did I mention that all the people in this place are clones commissioned by wealthy people to provide wombs for adopted children and for replacement organs?) to give them hope for the future, and to explain why some of them who are lucky enough to win the lottery to go to the Island (which is in fact an operating room where their organs are removed or where they give birth only to be euthanized I give the move great credit for actually using that word) never come back.
All of the inhabitants of this place are clones. They are owned. After two of them escape and link up with a character on the outside (wonderfully played by Steve Buscemi), Buscemis character explains to them that they are not real, not like me. Even the sympathetic characters in what we would think of as the real world are conditioned to see the clones as something less than human.
In the first part of the movie, it is remarkable that the owners of the clones control not only the physical fitness and schedule and learning level of the clones, but also curtail their sex drives. I marveled at how one might be willing to control the sexuality of a person who has monetary value for his or her purity to the owner, while our real-life society tells us that it us pointless to teach abstinence to our own children. The movie didnt blink over the fact that the clones were not permitted to have sex. I took the time, while watching the film, to wonder what the Libertarian view of that might be.
The Island goes on to explore several other areas of interest before becoming an action flick, which you will either like or you will not. Among them is the fact that the marketing department of the company making the clones tells people that their clones will be in a persistent vegetative state (PVS), meaning that they, as one character says will have no emotions, no thoughts, and feel no pain whatsoever.
This brings me full circle. I mentioned a bunch of news items from this week at the beginning. One of them, the fellow interviewed by WESH TV as he left the hospital, happened to have my wife on his team as a rehabilitation social worker. She is responsible for getting a good placement for him. His diagnosis was PVS. For 35 days, he was considered by some in the same way that the customers in the movie thought of their clones not real, not like me. Luckily, he had supporters in the community and a loving wife who did not give up. After day 35, he spoke, he interacted, and began to function. On the same day, I read an article out of South Korea in which prominent scientists (including the one who created Dolly the cloned sheep and the ones who today announced the successful cloning of a dog) stated that they had every intention of cloning humans for the purpose of using their organs, and were clear that stem cell research was the way to get there. Later in the day I read about the appellate decision in the UK in which a lucid patient/plaintiff was told that it was up to his doctors to decide when to stop treating him, and not his decision to make. I ask you, kind reader, are we moving in the direction of greater individual autonomy, or less? Is soylent green (to refer to yet another movie) any less horrible if it is a therapeutic medicine instead of food?
Ive revealed enough of my point of view in this article, so I wont repeat any conclusions to take from all of this, except for one: If you like movies, go see The Island.
Disparate sources of information lately keep bringing me back to the same topic. Senator Frist changes his mind, in an astonishingly incoherent manner, about fetal stem cell research. Cloned dogs are hanging out with cloned cats, so to speak, comes the news out of South Korea. This evening I watched an interview on a local TV news station, WESH in Orlando, of a man who had been in a persistent vegetative state but obviously is not now, as he answers the interviewers questions and expresses his desire to play with his children. The TV news declines to mention that he was PVS. Again from South Korea, doctors and scientists candidly discuss the unavoidable path from fetal stem cell research to human cloning to harvesting organs, as they gather to research how to do just that. In news from the UK, a man who is ill and knows he is going to get worse is told by judges, in advance, that he will be put down like a dog when his doctors feel he has become too burdensome.
So what is the FreeMarketNewsNetworks legal commentator doing pondering such things in print (or electrons, as it were)? After all, they dont pay me to write about stem cell research or to write movie reviews. Then again, they dont pay me to write legal commentary either, but thats another topic altogether.
Ive learned that discussing fetal stem cell research with Libertarians can be interesting. For instance, my talented sister-in-law is currently the intern for a rather well-known national talk show host, who is widely regarded as a powerful libertarian voice on the radio. That radio talk show host has opened up his website for my sister-in-law to write articles about this and that. The other day she wrote about fetal stem cell research, taking a position opposite that of her benevolent boss position (that is, she has problems with it). The hate mail poured in. Im still trying to get a handle on what the official Libertarian position might be on fetal stem cell research, and so continue with this article at my own peril.
Now comes the movie review. If you have not seen The Island, starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson, and intend to, then dont read any further. Im going to spoil it for you, big time. Since the movie has tanked at the box office, I dont feel any guilt at giving some of its secrets away. I happen to think it is one of the most important motion pictures in several years. Mind you, I didnt say one of the best movies, as it has its flaws the product placements are annoying and nonsensical (why would you advertise to people who have no choices?) and for some excessive action film clichés. However, I loved the film as a whole and see it as a rare inadvertent and certainly accidental Hollywood morality tale. Really, Im astonished this one ever got the green light for production.
Its like this. Reminiscent of movies like THX 1138, Logans Run, and Soylent Green, the film starts out by introducing us to people who live in a very structured and controlled environment. The viewer might be forgiven for buying the premise that this is so because the world has been taken over from a horrible pathogen and that where these people live is the only safe place on the planet, other than The Island. The Island is sold to the characters in the film as the last pathogen-free place on earth, a good place with sun and sky and water, and all of them want to go there. The problem is, The Island doesnt exist. It is a lie told to the clones (oh, did I mention that all the people in this place are clones commissioned by wealthy people to provide wombs for adopted children and for replacement organs?) to give them hope for the future, and to explain why some of them who are lucky enough to win the lottery to go to the Island (which is in fact an operating room where their organs are removed or where they give birth only to be euthanized I give the move great credit for actually using that word) never come back.
All of the inhabitants of this place are clones. They are owned. After two of them escape and link up with a character on the outside (wonderfully played by Steve Buscemi), Buscemis character explains to them that they are not real, not like me. Even the sympathetic characters in what we would think of as the real world are conditioned to see the clones as something less than human.
In the first part of the movie, it is remarkable that the owners of the clones control not only the physical fitness and schedule and learning level of the clones, but also curtail their sex drives. I marveled at how one might be willing to control the sexuality of a person who has monetary value for his or her purity to the owner, while our real-life society tells us that it us pointless to teach abstinence to our own children. The movie didnt blink over the fact that the clones were not permitted to have sex. I took the time, while watching the film, to wonder what the Libertarian view of that might be.
The Island goes on to explore several other areas of interest before becoming an action flick, which you will either like or you will not. Among them is the fact that the marketing department of the company making the clones tells people that their clones will be in a persistent vegetative state (PVS), meaning that they, as one character says will have no emotions, no thoughts, and feel no pain whatsoever.
This brings me full circle. I mentioned a bunch of news items from this week at the beginning. One of them, the fellow interviewed by WESH TV as he left the hospital, happened to have my wife on his team as a rehabilitation social worker. She is responsible for getting a good placement for him. His diagnosis was PVS. For 35 days, he was considered by some in the same way that the customers in the movie thought of their clones not real, not like me. Luckily, he had supporters in the community and a loving wife who did not give up. After day 35, he spoke, he interacted, and began to function. On the same day, I read an article out of South Korea in which prominent scientists (including the one who created Dolly the cloned sheep and the ones who today announced the successful cloning of a dog) stated that they had every intention of cloning humans for the purpose of using their organs, and were clear that stem cell research was the way to get there. Later in the day I read about the appellate decision in the UK in which a lucid patient/plaintiff was told that it was up to his doctors to decide when to stop treating him, and not his decision to make. I ask you, kind reader, are we moving in the direction of greater individual autonomy, or less? Is soylent green (to refer to yet another movie) any less horrible if it is a therapeutic medicine instead of food?
Ive revealed enough of my point of view in this article, so I wont repeat any conclusions to take from all of this, except for one: If you like movies, go see The Island.
