this morning i was up very early to get ready for work, on the sole basis of having had a bad dream that i woke up at noon and izzy was calling me yelling and i was running around in a towel trying to go to work...bad dreams are better than alarm clocks, apparently. why don't i just have pleasant dreams like other people? well except for those couple of future-dreams i had last week, those were happy, but happy in a "oh gee look how happy older michelle is" kind of way.

ever catch yourself thinking something and realize it's completely different from what you'd always told yourself you believed in? that's been happening recently, not a lot, but enough to make me wish i were like one of the ancient philosophers and could just sit down and work out my entire system of values and beliefs, so i'd have something to refer to, a code or at least some guidelines. what i believe about a variety of topics changes a lot. usually it's small changes, especially if i learn something new on the subject. for instance, this evening i was reading Scientific American online and there was an article on stem cells, about how korean scientists have successfully extracted stem cell lines from cloned embryos. now, i think cloning is wrong, but cloning for therapeutic purposes is grayer, because there are so many possible benefits to mankind. however, the article made the suggestion, culled from the President's Council on Bioethics, that cloned embryos be used but only if they were kept viable for a very short period, less than two weeks. i was nodding my head before i realized that i really don't think of those little cloned embryos--what stage would they be then, was it blastocyst?--as human beings. that really surprised me. part of it might be the fact that these cloned embryos would have basically no chance of full development if left to their own devices (hence why reproductive cloning is probably not going to be around anytime soon). part of it, though, is that i just don't consider a clump of a hundred or so cells to be a human being....this of course begs the question, when exactly does it become a human being? i believe in the soul, so when does the soul become present in the body? most religions hold that it is present at the moment of conception, which makes sense...but what happens when that life is taken and cloned? is there another soul in there? see, this kind of thing makes my thoughts go faster and faster and i get nowhere fast.

basically all i come out with is that i think therapeutic cloning should be allowed. maybe i haven't reasoned it all out yet in my mind yet, but i refuse to close out all those medical possibilities because of the possible ethical considerations. it's just not that big an obstacle in my mind, not in terms of the possible gains for humanity. enough thinking for tonight, i think.