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News
News: June/July 2000
Philosopher beats blasphemy charge • Feuding Aussie thinkers face forced merger • Scientists aim to abolish ageing • End of universe cancelled
Kuwaiti Philosopher Acquitted of Blasphemy
An appeals court in Kuwait acquitted a woman writer in March following her sentence to a suspended two months imprisonment in January for blasphemy and “publishing opinions that ridicule religion”. Alia Shuaib, a philosopher at Kuwait University, published a poetry collection entitled Spiders Bemoan a Wound, containing the line “I dream of passing, even for one moment, through God’s secret map.” Shuaib maintained that the line, which was alleged to be blasphemous, contained no insult to religion. The appeals court also dismissed a suspended two months in jail given to Shuaib’s publisher, Yehya al-Rubaian, who had been convicted of publishing the book without state permission, but raised his fine.
Place Sartre-Beauvoir, Paris
In April, the St-Germain-des-Pres square on Paris’ famous Left Bank was renamed after Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre and Feminist thinker Simone de Beauvoir. It is the place where the two writers and philosophers shared an apartment. Mayor Jean Tiberi commented: “This intersection is where two great minds and two exceptional destinies met. It’s where they cemented their union by reading each other’s manuscripts penned the night before.”
Fusion causes Friction
Dr Stephen Gaukroger, head of the School of Philosophy at the University of Sydney recently surprised and unsettled his thirteen fellow philosophers at the university by sending them an email announcing the merger of its two philosophy departments. The two departments have followed different styles of philosophizing since their bitter split, accompanied by strikes and walk-outs, in the early 1970’s following disagreements about feminism, Marxism and post-modern thought. The Department of Traditional and Modern Philosophy follows what has been described as a “mainstream approach” to philosophy, whereas the Department of General Philosophy emphasizes social philosophy with an active interest in social and political issues. Though co-operating to a degree, communication between the two departments is still difficult. Gaukroger explains: “The division has been an embarrassment for many years and this move should be a very important turning-point to end the whole divisive, ideological struggle.”
Nietzsche Exhibition
On the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of Friedrich Nietzsche’s death, the Schiller Museum in Weimar has organized an exhibition of Nietzsche paraphernalia. More detail than ever before is being revealed in the exhibition and its heavy catalogue: it contains documents and relics ranging from birth announcements to wine bills.
Human Cloning Ban May Be Lifted
A panel of experts led by the British Government’s Chief Medical Officer is considering whether to recommend legalisation of the cloning of human embryos for medical research. The panel is compiling a report for the Department of Health, and comments from one panel member indicated that they were likely to recommend a lifting of the ban. Producing cloned human beings would still be strictly forbidden, and remains technically a long way off anyway, but it would be legal to use the cloning of embryos to grow human cells for therapeutic purposes.
The Fountain of Youth?
In April it was announced that an American company, Advanced Cell Technology, had reversed the ageing process in animal cells.
A cell’s age is related to its ability to divide. Cells from new-born calves, say, have the ability to divide up to sixty times. In an elderly animal the cells have already divided that many times and are losing their ability to divide further to replace dying cells. Clones such as Dolly the sheep had ‘older’ cells at birth than normal newborns – their cells were basically the age of the animals the cloning cells had been taken from. However, when the scientists from Advanced Cell Technology took cells from elderly cows and used them to clone six calves they found that cells from the clones are able to divide up to ninety times, or in other words fifty percent more than in normal new-born calves. This may mean that the calves themselves age more slowly than normal calves. Scientists were cautious about making predictions as ageing takes place at the level of the whole organism as well as at the cellular level. However, if the effect can be produced in humans too then it could result in a fundamentally increased lifespan. Additionally (and more immediately) it would be possible to use rejuvenated cells from the elderly to recreate bone marrow, replacement tissue or even organs for patients with heart disease or neuro-degenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s Disease. In twenty years time, the pensioner who tells you “I’m eighty seven but I’m young at heart” may be telling the literal truth.
Immortal Questions
A professor of bioethics warned in the journal Science that we may soon have to start wrestling with the ethical problems of human immortality. “New research now allows a glimpse into a world in which ageing – and even death – may no longer be inevitable,” said Professor John Harris of Manchester University, who is a member of the British Government’s Human Genetics Commission. He predicted that progress in treating the ‘diseases of old age’ – cancer, heart disease, dementia – taken together with techniques to produce replacement cells and tissue through human cloning, would raise the maximum human lifespan to 120 years or beyond. It would be difficult to extend the average lifespan beyond 85, but experiments on other species seemed to indicate that genetic engineering could reduce the ageing rate, breaking even this barrier and clearing the road towards physical immortality. Harris speculated that the prospect of overcrowding, and fierce competition between old and young for jobs, could create a situation where society decided a fair age for its members’ survival and simply withdrew medical care beyond that age. Alternatively, it might be that people would be offered the chance of a longer life in return for agreeing not to have children.
Anti-Darwin Research Centre Faces Closure
A new row over evolution has erupted at a university in Texas. The Faculty Senate and the university administration at Baylor University in Waco (yes, that Waco) have fallen out over a controversial research centre. The Michael Polyani Center was established last year “for the academic exploration of the relationship between religion and science.” However, many staff at Baylor were upset firstly at not being consulted or even told about the establishment of the new Center and secondly over its academic stance. The man brought in to run the Center, William Dembski, is an opponent of Darwinian evolution, who advocates instead the theory of ‘Intelligent Design’. He and his colleague Bruce Gordon deny being Creationists, saying that Intelligent Design merely argues that there must be intelligence behind the universe but doesn’t speculate about the nature of that intelligence. A number of faculty members have dismissed Intelligent Design as ‘bogus science’, and the Faculty Senate has voted to ask the administration to close the Center.
Germaine Greer Kidnapped
Over the Easter weekend, leading feminist thinker Germaine Greer was kidnapped outside her home in Essex, England. Greer was tied up and held hostage in her home until she was rescued by some friends who had come to visit her. A 19 year old female student from Bath University was charged by Essex police with unlawful imprisonment and causing actual bodily harm. Greer, who is originally from Sydney, is the author of The Female Eunuch, one of the defining works of the feminist movement. She has also written numerous other books on feminism, literature and literary theory.
End of the Universe Cancelled
Just before this issue went to press, an international team of scientists announced the results of a new computer simulation of the development of the universe from the Big Bang onwards. The new calculations were based on measurements taken from a balloon above Antarctica. It had previously been thought that eventually gravity might slow down the expansion of the universe and then pull all the stars and galaxies back together into a Big Crunch. The new simulations, it is claimed, show that instead the universe will go on expanding forever.
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