Of all the bad award shows I have ever seen, the most moronic and irrelevant one is playing behind me as I write this: The AVN Awards, organized by Adult Video News. It’s the ultimate homage to the adult film industry, the denizens of which may be artificially beautiful to look at but are brain-dead, for the most part. Case in point – up now is the Male Performer of the Year Award, which is basically a reward for being endowed with, or subsequently bestowed, supersized genitalia. Manuel Ferreira was the winner from a list of about 20 freaks with enhanced organs and thankfully I can change the channel now that the suspense has dissipated.
Bare with me before you close this window, because this is not a dissertation on porn... I am simply using it as background because it turned up on my TMN channel as I was surfing the Web. I just changed the channel for what may as well be an Oscar-winning film, in comparison: Halloween IV.
But seriously, this adult film awards sham is the ideal tool for illustrating how far we have fallen as a race - when this is what has an audience giving an individual a standing ovation, it’s time to smite Sodom and Gomorrah once again. So, all of this hoopla, for essentially nothing of any consequence, got me pondering even more deeply the hottest news in history, pretty much... the first act of Creation since God did it, what, 20 billion years ago? Now it’s a group of American laboratory gods who are responsible, although I suppose God had a hand in a ‘various degrees of separation” sort of way.
If you haven’t heard yet, a team of scientists in Maryland, led by veteran geneticist Craig Venter, has managed to create artificial cells in their lab and then splice human DNA into them. In the words of Venter, who has purportedly been trying to create synthetic life for 15 years now, “we ended up with the world’s first synthetic cell powered and controlled totally by a synthetic chromosome made from four bottles of chemicals.” It’s amazing... and also somewhat ominous.
They have actually CREATED life, the way Dr. Frankenstein did on screen in the 1931 movie that features the good doctor, played by British actor Colin Clive, shouting “It’s alive” over and over again. I don’t know about you, but this is such staggering news that I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around it. This is NOT science-fiction, or a cloned sheep that didn’t live up to expectations, at least I don’t think so. It’s not the absurdist Raelians proclaiming that they have created a baby from alien DNA, or some Scientology ridiculousness dreamt up by late sci-fi writer L. Ron Hubbard, in my opinion THE biggest religious scam in history. And there have been a lot of them.
This is human life, artificial though it may be, with the potential to be used in untold ways, some useful and benevolent and others horrifically nightmarish. The scenarios are endless. Mind you, if what makes us human involves the belief that an omnipotent Creator wielded the paint-brush of universal life, this is nothing but science. If life on Earth is, however, the result of alien spores being tossed earthbound from a nearby planet like Mars, however, this is simply life being created in a lab rather than originating from Martian soil.
Still, it’s life and with life comes potential, for both good and evil. I suppose it all depends on who takes those cells and manipulates them... the medical field, or the industrial-military complex, perhaps? We can all hope that this becomes a boon for humankind and doesn’t ultimately wind up destroying us all. Personally, however, when I look around at what this world has turned into during MY brief lifetime, any new life can’t be a bad thing.
Congratulations to the New Creators. Please don’t let us down.
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