A guilty pleasure of mine has been the series Dollhouse on FOX. The fundamental premise of the series is that people can be programmed with whatever memories, personalities, knowledge and capabilities are desired to fulfill the wants, needs or desires of those with the resources and willingness to pay.
The morality involved is very much part of the underlying conflict of the show. Is it ethical to use a person for one's own ends if the person being used is a willing participant? What if they are unwilling or unaware?
Using people is becoming evermore a reality today. From the "world's oldest profession" to the artificial conception of a child to provide organs or tissue for a sibling, we have developed myriads of ways of using people.
Following the President Obama's executive order, the National Institute of Health proposed guidelines for federally funded research that will require destroying live human embryos for their stem cells. In essence we have a proposal for a federally funded program to utilize groups of individuals as parts supplies.
The draft guidelines are open for public comment through May 26, 2009. If you are disturbed by this, you may want to check information on the USCCB site here.
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