by purujit dasa
CULTURING CELLS
Scientists in their desperate endeavour to make life out of matter also advocate for a technique called cell culturing, where they keep individual cells alive through artificial means. In this way, they hope they will be able to “create” organs and when they put the organs together, the body as a whole will become alive. Just like Frankenstein. The problem with this is that you need the soul to keep the body going, so even if you succeed to make a whole body through cell culturing, you end up with a zombie- a body which is alive but has no consciousness in it.
Sadāpūta: Śrīla Prabhupāda, would it be possible for them to make a body and have a living entity enter into it?
Prabhupāda: Yes, there is yogic principle. They can enter into a young body and act as young man.
Sadāpūta: So a scientist then could claim he created life. He could... The way they talk, if he made a cell...
Prabhupāda: First of all let them, these foolish rascals, let them understand what is the point who is missing. Then they will replace. They have no knowledge what is missing. They are so fool.
Dr. Wolf: Śrīla Prabhupāda, they would not create. They would only imitate.
Prabhupāda: That is not... It is never created. That is their missing point, that life is never created and they are trying to create.
Room Conversation with Svarūpa Dāmodara -- March 1, 1975, Atlanta
Ravīndra-svarūpa: But it's seen that the scientists, they can take some skin from your body and by putting in different solutions can keep that skin itself alive for such a long time. They have taken the heart of a chicken out of the chicken's body and then kept it beating for so many hours even though that heart was away from the main chicken. Or they take some other tissue and keep it alive. So they say that each cell is an individual living being.
Prabhupāda: So we have no objection.
Ravīndra-svarūpa: That is all right. So there is a spirit soul in every...
Prabhupāda: No, no. All right or not all right I don't say. But if they say like that, we have no objection
Svarūpa Dāmodara: So the understanding to find out what life is is just to study what a cell is. That is their... They say that cells are composed of these molecules.
Prabhupāda: What is the position of the cells when the man dies?
Svaupa Dāmodara: The cells are dead. The cells that compose the body, they are dead. There are may be new living entities coming from different parts, but the cell that composed the human body is dead. They cannot reproduce anymore.
Prabhupāda: So what is your proposal? That cell is life?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes.
Prabhupāda: So can you develop life from the cells? As you said that you take the skin and you keep, so take the cells and develop into life.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: That's called culturing of the cells. They can culture it.
Prabhupāda: That's all right. Whether you have done it.
Ravīndra-svarūpa: Well, they have that process called cloning?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: No, no, this is the culture. That means take a cell from a living tissue, and you culture it and you supply the sufficient nutrients. Then theoretically they will grow forever. They will divide. They will...
Prabhupāda: So they will grow to a human being?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Not a human being, but the cells just divide.
Prabhupāda: Then an ant, an ant?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: No.
Prabhupāda: Then what is this? (laughter)
Morning Walk -- July 14, 1975, Philadelphia
Pañcadraviḍa: ...take the chemicals and combine them together in a test tube so that a soul can enter into that and...
Prabhupāda: God is not your father's servant, that He will arrange to bring the soul. You are God's servant.
Pañcadraviḍa: So you're... Cannot be done, then?
Prabhupāda: No. If you bring, you can bring soul by some arrangement, then we shall think that you are better than God. But you are rascal. You are thinking like that. You cannot do that. God will not agree to send a soul to your arrangement. You should always remember that you are servant of God. God is not your servant. That is knowledge.
Morning Walk -- April 2, 1975, Māyāpur
(to be continued...)
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