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CSUDH - Habermas - UWP - Archives

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: August 28, 2004
Reviewed:
Latest Update: August 28, 2004
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Shared Reading: Stem Cell Research

1. Introduction Why I chose to share this reading.
2. Focus: Main point of this reading.
3. Reading Full identification of source for reading AND excerpt.
4. Concepts: Concepts and Key Words.
5. Discussion Discussion questions.
6. Conceptual Linking to Substantive Courses What this has to do with our class.

* * *

Introduction:

• Issues on stem cell research fit closely into the "social issues agenda" that runs through electoral politics in 2004. These readings should give you some sense of the issues in substantive terms.

Focus:

• I would like for you to come away from this reading able to state what the issues, from the perspective of many groups, actually are.

Concepts and Key Words:

• stem cells: cells, present in the fetus, that have the potential to become any kind of cell, thus able to develop into any organ or part of the body. This potential for broad development allows scientists and medical people to use the cells in research and hopefully in the cure of many potentially life-threatening illness that threaten many different organs and parts of the body.

Reading:

Made me think of Van Gogh's Starry Night.
I scanned it from printed version because having computer problems. jeanne

• Backup of Britain Embraces Embryonic Stem Cell Research New York Times.
• Backup of Stem Cells: Promise, in Search of Results New York Times.
• Stem Cell Research Gains Political Life Kerry criticizes Bush's limits on the science. And as polls show voters favor less restrictive policies, the president aims to recast his stance.
  Los Angeles Times.

Discussion Questions:

1. What is the primary difference in stem cells from other cells?

   Thet have not yet become differentiated from other kinds of cells. They may grow into whatever cell types the body needs.

2. In what ways is the use of stem cells not like killing a fetus?

   Many, many potential fetuses are unborn, for any number of reasons. If all potential fetuses were born we would reach complete over population very quickly. Potential lives are not the same as actual lives, and we are hard pressed at this point to define such ethical issues when so many of the world's existing population of children are already dying of preventable starvation and disease. These are not simple issues.

3. Why do we fear science?

   Well, for one thing we discovered that the knowledge and progress that came with the enlightenment served evil as well as good. So science, all be itself, is no longer defensibly "good." Then we've had the Frankenstein horror tale of humans creating life to their own ends.

   Horkheimer and Adorno and Benjamin questioned the enlightenment as the Second World War ended. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is from 1831. So we shouldn't be surprised to see that part of our dominant discourse includes a certain fear of science as aiding evil not good in some circumstances.

Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night

Conceptual Linking to Substantive Courses:

• Agencies:
  Sample linking: Ways in which underlying assumptions of assimilation affect services offered and clients' ability to access and use those services. How does this reading illustrate the need for social agencies, for more generalized agencies, for what Bolman and Deal would call "leadership" AND "management"? How does this reading suggest ways in which we could be more effective in rendering help, and what is the reading's relationship to a "safety net" for those who need help?

• Criminal Justice:
  Sample linking: Ways in which some groups are underrepresented in the unstated assumptions of our theories. How does this reading serve to illustrate adversarialism, mutuality, retribution, revenge, illocutionary understanding, the definition and operation of the criminal justice system?

• Law:
  Sample linking: Extent to which laws are made on the assumption that we are all essentially assimilated to the dominant culture. How does this reading help us see the need for contextual readings in law? How does it relate to our natural instincts to seek some kind of natural law? What facts and principles does the reading offer for discourse that could clarify for Others validity claims presented by an Obscure Other?

• Moot Court:
  Sample linking: Ways in which to make validty claims of harm understood by those who have never experienced many of the world's different perspectives. How can this reading enlighten our praxis in terms of different kinds of discourse, like instrumental, illocutionary, governance?

• Women in Poverty:
  Sample linking: The culture of poverty and assimilation. How does the reading deal with our underlying assumptions about poverty, especially poverty of the exploited, the NOT- male? What does the reading suggest of the interrelationship between our society and its children, generally cared for by women, often poor?

• Race, Gender, Class:
  Sample linking: The extent to which silence has been imposed by these affiliations so that domination and discrimination have entered our unstated assumptions in interpersonal relations and the structural context arising from them. What does the reading tell us about exploitation and alternative ways to deal with one another? What does it tell us about institutionalized -isms and our denial of complicity? What does it tell us about our common humanity?

• Religion:
  Sample linking: The spiritual component. Humans are spiritual creatures, creatures that recognize moments that go beyond ourselves to God, Allah, Isis, Gaia, the Universe, or a deep sense of responsibility to create our own meanng. How does the reading fit into our ability, our need to create such meaning in life?

• Love !A:
  Sample linking: What's the aesthetic link in this reading? How does it bring us closer to one another as humans? What does it tell us about our need for love, unconditional love, not rewards for doing well or being well, but caring and acceptance for being who we are?