The Catholic News Agency (CNA) looks at the tendency to abort children with Down Syndrome as a reflection of the societal view, echoed rather more strongly in many parts of the biology community, that these lives are not worth living.^[1] These children may not be able to achieve so much in today’s technology and science driven world, but they are still able to love and laugh, hurt, mourn, and cry. They are still human and deserving of better than to be brutally killed in the earliest and most defenseless months of their lives.

1. Catholic News Agency. “Pre-natal testing: weeding out society’s undesirables?” www.catholicnewsagency.com 2005-10-20. http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=5203

Compare the argument against boxing as presented in a BBC report of a Catholic journal’s article^[1] to a rebuttal posted on some boxing website.^[2] I hesitate to call it a “rebuttal,” because it is rather pathetic. The presented argument basically boils down to “Yes, people die, yes everything you said about it is true, but unlike the gladiators, they choose it, so its okay.” As if every gladiator was 100 percent forced to become one, as if none of them came to enjoy the gruesome “sport” they “played.” As if no boxer has ever felt pressured to accept a match, to enter the ring.

But the choice really is nearly a side point here. For what sort of “sport” is it when at best one side takes what is likely permanent injury? Reading this drove home with me the differences between boxing and wrestling. It is not that I did not know the differences before, but it confirmed my thoughts. For in both you strive to physically dominate, physically beat, and, to differing extents, to hurt the other to make him submit. The difference is entirely in that “to differing extents.” For in wrestling, the permanent injury is guarded against, usually comes as an error on the part of the opponent, and often even then only if accompanied by an error on the part of the referee. Boxers and boxing on the other hand are known for the brain damage the sustain, the phenomena of being “Punch Drunk.” Of being like Rocky, so damaged even in victory as to become effectively retarded.

While less true here, this is especially true in the Asian matches, which have fewer restrictions and greater lethality than the American version, so much so that it qualifies with the martial arts. The point of boxing is to damage the opponent, whereas the point of wresting is to bring him to submission, by pain if your skill and strength is insufficient, but without damaging him.

1. BBC News. “Catholic journal condemns boxing” BBC News World Edition 2005-10-14. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4340514.stm
2. Mr. Aaron King. “Boxing Gets a Shot on the Jaw” East Side Boxing 2005-10-18. http://www.eastsideboxing.com/news.php?p=4958&more=1

It has apparently been some time^[1] since I last wrote about stem cells. It is not that they have not been in the news, but that I do not feel that there has been anything significant added to the debate. An article yesterday in in Slate changes that.^[2] It takes a serious look at the ways in which recent developments will potentially split those who are against embryonic stem cell research into differing (I will not say “opposing” here, I think that is too strong a word) camps. It also reveals rather more of the details, of the potentials both implicit and explicit, of the new proposals than I have previously read or heard. The potential for one of the cells take to develop into a fully formed, fully alive and unquestionably human child in its own right for example.

It looks hard at the ways in which this will potentially blur the lines of what is human and what is not, where one starts to be a life with a right to live, versus a mass of cells. And in doing so, it, almost certainly accidentally, exposes the importance of the Church’s stance against artificial method of creating life. For all of them lead, necessarily, to this, and to this blurring that we now face.

1. Mr. Luke Schierer. “Stem cells cost lives” Random Unfinished Thoughts 2005-08-22. https://www.schierer.org/~luke/log/index.php?s=stem+cells
2. Mr. William Saletan. “Stem-Cell Shakeup” Slate 2005-10-19. http://slate.msn.com/id/2128306/