"If you or your loved ones are stricken with an illness and your only hope of being cured is therapeutic cloning, will you go for it? Why?"

Yes, I will encourage my loved ones or even myself to go for it. To live or to die, one has to choose either one. If one chooses to live, one has to definitely choose therapeutic cloning since this is the only hope to be cured.

Personally, I feel that therapeutic cloning is not so terrifying. It just involves duplicating a healthy copy of a sick person's tissues or organ for transplant. The damages therapeutic cloning inflict is not as serious as that of human cloning. It does not really go against human rights since it is just a stem cell research.

If one chooses to live, he has to forgone certain things. One example is one's religion. If one is a strong Catholic believer, he has to weigh the benefits and disadvantages that therapeutic cloning can give and cause. Note: Catholicism are against therapeutic cloning.

But for me, I will ask :"Why give up your life just to hold on to your belief (religion)? Shouldn't one be flexible?"

I am fortunate. My religion is Budddhism and Buddhism supports therapeutic cloning. Though embryonic stem-cell research is a murder in the eyes of Buddhiists, that only applies to destroying 'excess' embryos. However, if the research is conducted on already-aborted embryos with the good intention of finding cures for diseases, it is permissible. In other words, to what extent Buddhism supports therapeutic cloning, mainly depends on the doer's intention. Since me or my loved ones are stricken with illness and that our only hope of being cured is therapeutic cloning, and that our religion, Buddhism, supports this type of cloning, we will therefore go for it.

Another reason for my advocation is that Singapore itself, supports therapeutic cloning. The benefits of therapeutic cloning is that the stem cells can be turn into nerve cells, heart-muscle cells, pancreas cell, blood cells and so on. It is hoped that these cells can be used to repair and renew activities of the damaged parts of the human body such as diseased brains, severed spinal cords, torn nerves or defective hearts. Thus since therapeutic cloning can bring about such great benefits to the suffering or sick people, and can advance science into a new era, I see no reason in not supporting therapeutic cloning.

There are no doubts that therapeutic cloning may cause conflicts to arise. UN has already banned this type of cloning using human embryos. However there are still countries like USA which totally ban both therapeutic and human cloning and strongly emphasize on total ban on both the latter clonings. This is because they consider embyos as human and feel that these embryos deserve respect. They claim that pro-lifers ignore the pain of the living for the sake of some embryo. Moreover, there are come religions like Catholicism and Protestantism which do not support cloning. The followers of these religion commented that therapeutic cloning which involves embryonic stem-cell research - like abortion, which requires the culling of embyros - is morally unacceptable.

Richard Nicholson of the British Bulletin of Medical Ethics has once said that cloning research may well be ‘sowing the seeds of our destruction.’ I disagree with his statement. Till now, there is no concrete evidence of the tremendous harm therapeutic cloning using stem cells can inflict.

Therefore, if me or my loved ones are stricken with an illness and my only hope of being cured is therapeutic cloning, I will still go for it.

Would you buy products that contain GM foods for consumption by your family? Why or why not?

Yes, I will still buy products that contain GM foods for consumption by my family members.

Again, as mentioned in the earlier blog, there are many potential benefits in a consumer perspective. Medicines and vaccines are costly to produce. With edible vaccines developed in tomatoes and potatoes, these vaccines will be much easier to ship, store and administer than traditional injectable vaccines. This means that we can get our vaccines for certain disesses much easier and cheaper.

GM crops are herbicide and insect resistant. This means that the food we eat are safer and will most probably not contain anymore pesticides or herbicides that will endanger our health and lives. We will also not find any insects wriggling out from the fruits that will disgust us and make us puke. Therefore GM foods provide another alternative to people who are more health conscious.

Most importantly, my family has been eating GM food for the past few years and we are still fit and well. Though there are articles that say that toxins are found in mice after eating GM potatoes, to replace human beings with mices is not a very good or reliable method iin proving whether GM food is harmful. However, if we have to use laboratory animals as gauges, there are still experiments that can prove that GM food have no harmful effects. One example is the experiment on the GM peas where the nutritional value of diets containing GM peas expressing bean alpha-amylase inhibitor when fed to rats for ten days at two different (30% or 60%) dietary inclusions, was shown to be similar to that of parent-line peas. Thus this shows that GM foods are safe and hence its product should be safe.

Therefore, I will still buy the products that contain GM foods for consumption by my family due to the above reasons.

As one of the country's decision makers, would you advocate the use of GM crops? Why or why not?

Yes, I will support the use of GM crops.

As consumers, we will tend to benefit. Medicines and vaccines often are costly to produce and sometimes require special storage conditions which may not be readily available in third world countries. If edible vaccines are developed in tomatoes and potatoes, the vaccines will be much easier to ship, store, and administer than traditional injectable vaccines. One example is the GM rice plants where they can produce the hepatitis antibody, which can be used to produce immunity to the virus(as reported by The Daily Yomiuri). As rice is a necessity to Asians, the production of GM rice can help reduce the costs of producing medicine or vaccines. The money which is to be used in production of medicines initially can then be channelled and used in other areas.

In religious point of view, GM crops are halal. This has been determined by the Islamic Jurisprudence Council (IJC). Though there is still discussion about the position of crops into which DNA from forbidden foods has been incorporated, all biotechnology derived foods on the market are from approved sources. The IJC position is supported by the Islamic Food and Nutrition Council of America (IFANCA), and the IFANCA certification is accepted by Islamic organisations in Indonesia, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. So, for Muslims, they should have no fear for any GM food. As for other religions, use of GM foods may not be a big problem. Since the Buddhist, Hindus and Sikh support stem cell research, they should also be advocating GM food, which is also a product of ES cell research.

Moreover, if I am one of the decision maker in a third country, I will definitely support the use of GM crops because one of the major problem that I as a decision maker must solve is malnutrition. Since GM food can produce greater yield, which means that farmers can produce more fom the same area of land, and also provide certain vitamins that my people lack, I see no reason in not supporting GM food. Furthermore, GM crops are herbicide tolerant and insect resistant. They can offer farmers simpler control of otherwise difficult to control related weeds and huge environmental benefits as farmers move to low or zero ploughing. This protects soil biodiversity, helps reduce energy use and CO2 emissions.

Though there are debates that GM crops are harmful to human health such that they can cause allergenicity and other unknown effects, the benifits of GM crops are a wholesome that as a decision maker in the counrty, I will not resist the use of GM food.

What are your views on abortion?

Abortion is the deliberate bringing to an end of a human pregnancy. Many people see aborton as a sin which cannot be condone as abortion is more than murdering someone. Abortion is like taking a helpless life away, even before the foetus can survive on its own. However, generally, I am not against abortion.

There are several reasons behind my stand. Firstly, we must know that normal human beings have conscience. They know how to think. They know what is right and wrong and what is good and bad for them. As abortion is a serious matter, it is important to think over and over again on whether their decisions made is correct. Human beings have feelings. No one will like to kill their own children. It must have been something big or serious that force them to do so. Since abortion is the most inhumane way of killing someone, the sense of guilt they feel before or after abortion has already shown us that they have conscience. Imagine a woman who is in the operating theatre, going to abort the foetus. Just as the surgeon is going to anaesthetize her, she jumps out from the bed and decides not to abort the foetus. This could have shown that she has struggled a lot before coming to this decision. I will not be against her even if she later on decides or that her final decision is to abort the foetus. Thus i am not against abortion as normal human beings must have think from all aspects before they can come up upon this decision.

Social factor is another reason. In United States of America, bearing a child before one is married and raising it single-handedly is nothing big to fuss about. However this may not be the case in certain countries. Having a child before one is married is condemned in certain countries, especially conservative ones. One will be looked down by her other villagers if they know that she is pregnant before she is married. They will tend to classify her as an unfaithful person, giving away her chastity before her nuptical. This problem can be resloved if the man and the pregnant lady proceeds with their wedding. However, if the woman is pregnant and that she cannot finds the man or that the man had run away without bearing any responsibility, in that conservative society of hers, the best choice may be to abort the child. If this child is being born to earth, he will have to face the humiliation due to his mother's deed. Why let a child suffer for what the adults did?

Looking into other cases like pregnation due to rape, abortion may be the best choice. This life will only serve as a reminder of the ordeal and torment. If the life is to be shown no love, then why should it be born? Should it be born to suffer?

Lastly, economic factor is one of my reasons why i am not against abortion. In exterme cases like poverty, I may recommend abortion as it frees one from an extra financial burden. If one cannot feed herself, how is she able to feed her child? In Africa, many mothers still bore their children despite of poverty. However, poverty can kill a child even before he reaches the age of six. You watch him live till his bones are going to protrude out of his meat, and then watch him die. Is it fun to see him suffer like this? Again, is it fun to let him suffer with you? One may think of sending the child for adoption but why should one bore him if one does not want to foot the responsibility as a mother? What rights have one got to let the child suffer in agony later on if he knows he is being abandoned?

However in some cases or situations, i think that abortion is not a solution. For Roman Catholics, because of religious purposes, abortion is advised against. They believe that abortion is taking away part of God's creation. If a Roman Catholic aborts her child, she is deemed as disrespecting God or defying God's order. She will be chastised by her priest. Perhaps in this case, what she can do is to send her child away for adoption.

In another case where one has the financial ability to raise a child but wants to abort it just for the reason of unplanned pregnancy, I will think that abortion is not a very good solution to the problem. Is unplanned pregnancy something big enough to force one to go for abortion? One is not in extreme cases like poverty. Moreover, one has the financial ability to bring a child up. Worse still, if one has the financial ability to buy a car or to raise a pet, why not a child?

In conclusion, i am not really against abortion as i feel that the idea of abortion depends on the situations one faces. Most importantly, no matter what the choices are, it still lies in the hands of the mother.

"In the modern world, image is everything." Discuss.

Image is the representation of an object or a person. It is the first thing others can see on one. Image is like beauty, the outer beauty that people see on one. It is subjective. Especially in the modern world, how one perceives another is usually due to the image one portrays. Thus I agree that in the modern world, image is everything to a big extent.

Image can help one to judge a person. It presents what kind of person oneself is. As we know, 'first impression lasts'. People usually measure one by his image. How well one presents oneself can leave an everlasting effect or impression to another. For example, if one goes for an interview sloppily, with unkempt hair and shirt all creased up, his boss will have a bad impression on him. He may think that that person is lazy and untidy and hence, his work wil also be as messy as him. In the end, he probably may not get into the next round of interview and perhaps, a high probability of not being appointed a post.

Image can affect one's choice. When people look at things, it is natural that they always start by looking at the package, at how the object is presented to them. Usually, when we buy a gift for someone, we will see whether the object is pretty before thinking whether it is useful or not. This has already shown that image is a deciding factor to one's choice. Another example is the size of the person. In the modern world today, beanpole woman is seen as intelligent while plump women are often discriminated as they are viewed to be less intelligent than average. Thus slim woman tend to get a higher chance of a better job than plump women. In work or interview, these scenarios can often be seen. Thus most people perceive slimness as a way to be accepted and obesity as a stigma in society. Hence this shows that image affects one's choice.

So why in olden days, image may not be everything? Perhaps people then believe more in one's capabilities than image(though we cannot dey that during Victorian times, plumpness is viewed as attractive). People then were poorer and more practical. They know that one's intelligence is shown through one's hardwork and capabilities, not just through image. In the long Chinese drama serial 'Walking Out", it showed that though those so-called 'bao fa hu' (people who stroke rich just by selling land left to them by their ancestors) stroke rich by selling land, changing their image and identity immediately, it was not until a while that they had spent away every dollars and cents which can last their descendents for decades, hence changing their identity and image back to one again. This shows that how good one's image is, is not everything in those days. Probably to them, hardwork is then everything.

Though image is everything in the modern world, we cannot judge a book by its cover. Image is no quality in things themselves. It merely exists in the mind which contemplates them. Image is the outer beauty one can see, but it may not reflect the inner beauty of the person. In other words, what is out may not be what is within us. This is because looks can be deceiving. A person who is beautiful may not be that clever than a person with an average look but is brainy. Hence lesser emphasis should be place on image.

Nevertheless, image is everything to a big extent in this modern world. Superficial as image can be, it usually helps one to judge others, affects one's choice and can also in turn affect relationships between people.