I let you buy kidneys, you let me buy eggs!

The issue of organ trade is now splashing all over the news in Singapore. Three things strike me about it: the timing, the way it is being reasoned and the grounds on which it is being argued.

Let us begin on the timing. Few months ago, Singapore showed its will to become a leading nation in biotechnology and concretely in Stem cell research, more particularly, embryonic stem cell research. We have reasons to believe that because in the short span of few weeks, it called the public to react on two medical procedures that were being proposed: compensating women for donating eggs and creating cybrids. Both proposals had the same purpose: the artificial fabrication of human embryos for the purpose of research.

The only available human eggs or embryos are those left behind by the IVF industry. When women don’t want the spare embryos to be implanted, they have the choice of “donating” them for research. However, this supply is way too short for any meaningful research.

Wasting our lives: Monday of the 5th week

I have just finished preaching about today’s gospel, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt 10:39). Basically, I compared life with money. If you save it, it devaluates. If you invest it, it increases in value. So we need to be very careful and choose what is really worth investing in our lives.

After reading the good news of the gospel, I have the habit of reading the “other news”, the newspaper. In the article “Marry now? It’s quite contrary.”, Tessa Wong ponders on how the median age of marriage has been raised in the past few years. Should someone marry early, like they used to do, or just delay the big date for better seasons?

Her answer is a reaction to a young mother who married early. To this lady, motherhood has changed her life drastically. Now her blog has “tediously boring updates about picking up kids from school and cooking dinners for six.” According to the writer, “that happens when you have kids before you turn 30.”

In other words, according to the wise advice of our author, if you have boring entries in your blog, your life is worthless. But did she ask this “boring” mother, whether it is all worthy? Is an apparently monotonous life the criteria to determine what is world pursuing, what gives true meaning to our lives?

I truly hope that the young journalist’s blog is excillarating and that one day, when she looks back at her life, she truly thinks that having being entertained was worth her life-time. I think that the young mother of boring blog-entries finds more fulfilment in her life, devoted to real loved ones in the apparent monotony of a daily life, than if she spent her days writing juicy blog entries to satisfy someone else’s thirst for entertainment.

Perhaps, deep meaning, daily commitment, fidelity and constancy, do not make impressive blog entries, but do feed human life with true meaning. Perhaps, Jesus is right, if you lose your life and invest it in others, you will find it!