Memorial or Mausoleum

Are the buildings in our lives meaningful? Or are they merely physical–neutral spaces devoid of value in themselves?

I don’t think it’s too controversial that a building could mean something: maybe where you got married, maybe where your children were born, maybe where you worked your first job.

Are the buildings in our lives meaningful? Or are they merely physical–neutral spaces devoid of value in themselves?

I don’t think it’s too controversial that a building could mean something: maybe where you got married, maybe where your children were born, maybe where you worked your first job.

My concern here is the great potential for cultural and ideological influence that buildings bear. Structures aid in forming our visual landscape; they shelter us, inspire us, imprison us. By 2010, we’ll have another 12 structural influencers, all dedicated to human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research. On May 7, 2008, the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) approved $271 million in facilities grants to 12 academic and research institutions , establishing the funds for building 800,000 square-feet of new embryonic stem cell research laboratories with California taxpayer dollars.

CIRM is the state agency established with the passage of Proposition 71 in 2004 With this month’s vote and approval of the funds–which amount to roughly 9 percent of the total check over 10 years–plans have been set forth to complete these 12 projects by 2010. Not wasting any time, eh?

The $271 million is spread out, in allotments of $3.2 million to $43.5 million, among three types of facilities that will pursue (to varying degrees) basic and discovery stem cell research, preclinical (or translational) research, and preclinical development and clinical research.

One of the new facilities will be built on the campus of my own alma mater, University of California at Berkeley. Cal, like most booming campuses, seems like it’s almost always under construction. The Li Ka Shing Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences is the most recent addition, offering 60,000 square-feet and 12 labs dedicated to embryonic stem cell research.

Ten of the 12 projects receiving the Prop 71 money will be located on university campuses.

Please entertain a brief diversion to help me explain the problem. I sense a greater issue at work here: the cultural importance and ideological influence of human embodiment and the physicality of structures . In an age that teems with Internet social media communities, online universities, remote employment and Web-based grocery stores, the modern humanoid doesn’t really ever have to leave its house. It will communicate with others, get a degree, work for some cash, and feed itself just fine. But I doubt that the majority of us will ever reach such a reclusive, barely-human state. I’m hopeful and confident that we’ll maintain direct human contact, and continue to move through physical spaces, despite the temptations of convenience and immediacy. At the same time I’m beset with concern about the nature and quality of these relationships and physical spaces where we exist.

Back to the buildings at hand: It’s a physical situation. Physical sciences are involved. Physical structures are involved. This involves physical persons (the greatest of these?) conducting experiments on other physical persons (the least of these?). And aren’t we much more than physical ? Yet we identify so tangibly with these physical things, I begin to wonder how deeply our regular surroundings can embed certain beliefs and values and assertions in our minds.

Consider, for instance, these physical influences over human worldview, beliefs and experience:

The weather can alter our daily moods.

Our own bodily comfort or health affects our outlooks on life.

Friendship is most complete and beneficial when you’re physically together. Near feels better than far (MySpace and Facebook wouldn’t want you to think this).

The issue here is embodiment and physicality. We are so very influenced by the physical, whether we are aware of it or not. So when it comes to erecting a structure in such an influential place as the contemporary university–where children are supposed to become adults, learn virtue and develop their ideology–we should see that the CIRM-funded facilities are more meaningful and important than they might at first seem.

Picture, for instance, the 19-year-old undergraduate on her way to her UCB class on the ” Rhetoric of Scientific Discourse: Stem Cells, Cloning, and the Genetic Imaginary “. She’s surrounded by buildings that memorialize and proclaim a particular perspective to her. These structures form the context of her education, and the work done and ideologies taught inside of them directly seek to influence and mold her own worldview.

Structures are suggestive . And these buildings, bought on the Prop 71 budget, suggest something radical: academic, political and cultural approval of (human) embryonic stem cell research. They are monuments–monoliths even–of scientific dominance and strength.

Even Robert Klein, chairman of CIRM’s governing agency , agrees, “This Prop 71 stem cell research facilities program is one of the largest building programs ever dedicated for a new field of medical science and it will deliver an impact that will be felt worldwide.”

Now, it would be too presumptive to suggest that all of the work done in these influential structures will be unethical. After all, maybe some labs would consider creating more physical structures for continuing the years of already successful endeavors of adult stem cell research (the preferred term now being “tissue stem cells”). Regenerative medicine that uses tissue stem cells from umbilical cord blood, skin cells or bone marrow (i.e., non-embryonic human stem cells ) already boasts of proven, scientifically peer-reviewed studies, resulting in successful, life-saving procedures. What can hESC research boast of? Promise. That’s it–easy (albeit big) words–the promise of science, our technological god of modernity.

Now, some California research institutions are readily pursuing adult tissue stem cell research! But they didn’t get any of the CIRM money.

Fr. Thomas Berg laments this sad fact in a recent National Review Online article . The Children’s Hospital of Oakland Research Institute (ahem… just down the street from UC Berkeley), led by Dr. Bertram Lubin, applied for a $5 million piece of CIRM’s facilities grant last fall to support research on sickle-cell anemia. Berg suggests–and I’d argue justifiably so–that “the work was faulted among other things for showing ‘no evidence of current use or planned expansion into the use of human embryonic stem cells.'”

Given the lack of public understanding and interest about Prop 71, the difficulty for John Q. Taxpayer to learn about what CIRM is doing with the Prop 71 money, and the general scientistic anathema for adult tissue stem cell research, I’m worried about how these academic buildings and university research facilities are going to further influence the voting public of California during their most intellectually formati
ve years.

Under Prop 71, the CIRM research facility grants create a very real situation. And reality comes in two equally real parts: the physical and the non-physical. And I’m thinking that our philosophically naturalistic, scientific culture is more willingly influenced by the physical than the non-physical. That said, we’ve got a very real physical situation on our hands. Our physical surroundings weigh heavily on our worldview, which weighs heavily on how we vote and what/who we stand for. Here, the physical represents and even argues for an ideology that will have profound effects on the future of human life.

Consider this final thought: Klein also responds to the May 7, 2008, hESC research facilities decision that “[California research institutions’] incredible commitment [of funding] underscores the promise that stem cell research holds for patients suffering from chronic disease and injury.”

There’s that word again. Promise . For such a politically skeptical culture–people so wary of the easy words of our would-be leaders–we sure have exhibited a lot of faith in the “promise” scientists and politicians are making for human embryos. We’re betting $271 million (and who knows how many human lives?) on that promise this month, and by 2010 and beyond we’ll see how these structures stack up: memorials or mausoleums?