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I must be mad. I’ve just started writing an essay without any prospect of academic credit. This is something I never would have done while at university; it was enough of a struggle to get mandatory terms essays down on paper. You see my head is frequently crowded with thoughts, but they tend to resist being developed fully into printable form without the carrot and stick of deadlines. They’re quite happy to zip around in my head, preferring not to be directly observed - like streetwise Schrödinger’s cats.
But I’ve decided I need to get something clear in my head. For some years now I’ve had the feeling that there some peculiar underlying moral assumptions common to the loose assemblage of identity politics, progressive social agendas and discourse that is sometimes collectively referred to as “political correctness”. But I haven’t yet managed to pin it down - and the increasingly hackneyed status of the ‘PC’ label makes any such analysis perilous indeed (if you’re like me, you probably now cringe a little whenever you hear the expression - particularly if is followed by “gone mad”). But let’s forget about that term for a moment, because I’ve noticed something else. When an advocate for progressive social change puts their message into the media, I am fascinated by what often appears to be a dissonance between the stated moral principles and the spokes person’s implicit moral reasoning. The question is: Is ‘political correctness’ a confused concept in more ways than one? Or is there a relatively coherent ethical framework underpinning the various movements grouped under that label? I want to answer this question soon - my thoughts on the subject are cluttering up the attic of my head, and I’ve decided I need the space. It’s time to let out those cats.
One of the major ethical concerns over therapeutic human cloning may soon be over. Just a few days ago, independent research teams in Japan and the US announced that they had successfully transmuted ordinary human adult skin cells into pluripotent stem cells - that is, generic or undifferentiated human cells that can be triggered to grow into any type of human tissue - thus opening the door toward therapeutic clone technology such as the cultivation of replacement organs grown from the recipient’s own tissue. Just two years ago I wrote an essay on what I saw as an ethical problem with one extreme implication of clone therapy: immortality. I still see that particular concern as valid. But the more immediate qualm about destroying a human embryo for its stem cells seem no longer to be a live issue, with even the most vocal opponents of stem cell research appearing to be mollified by - even supportive of - these latest developments.
At this stage, the techniques involve retroviruses, something that renders the resulting cells unsuitable for direct human applications. But one gets the feeling that the holy grail of medical biotechnology (or should that be Pandora’s Box?) may be within reach very soon.
More on the terrorism raids court case that was recently quashed. Within 24hrs of the Solicitor General’s decision not to prosecute the arrested activists under the Terrorism Suppression Act, an anonymous source illegally leaked evidence collected under authority of that legislation. Many supporters of the arrested group were predictably outraged, as this evidence would never otherwise have seen the light of day, and is not even in the hands of the defense counsel.
This has interesting parallels with an earlier case in which a high profile rape case involving former police officers Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum and then-current police Assistant Commissioner Clint Rickards, was marked by the illegal release of the former two’s conviction history. At the time the people who committed the act - and many others were sympathetic with their actions - felt it was morally correct to release this information. I wonder though if all of the people who supported the leaking of information in the rape case would also morally support the release of evidence of the Terror trial, if they knew it to be equally damning?
