Bold probe of growing Culture of Death
By Chuka Nnabuife
TITLE: Culture of Death: A Bioethic Reflection
AUTHOR: Edeh Kenneth Onukwube
PUBLISHER: Apostleship of Mary Intervention
DATES OF PUBLICATION: 2011;
2019
ISBN: 978-061-601-2
READING how condoms cannot effectively prevent pregnancy or
the contract of sexually transmitted diseases (STD) was jolting to me but I was
alarmed further to learn that abortion and some common off-the-shelf drugs
usually taken after intercourse can be the causes of serious infections and
damning medical conditions that many people live with in contemporary time.
Recently, I encountered a book that unravelled a lot that I
never knew about ethics, faith, sex, society and culture. It was an engaging
reader and ample reference material on issues that are seldom discussed let
alone being made a discourse of.
The book, Culture of Death: A Bioethic Reflection, as the
author, Kenneth Onukwube Edeh explains “tends to destroy all forms of death
resulting from ignorance and poverty of human mind. It promotes healthy and
authentic lifestyle.” What the author needs to add is that his is one of the
very few categorical stands that discountenances political correctness or
corporate funds influence in the daisy gender and fertility discourse of
contemporary time.
Dwelling on the relatively uncommon intellectual faculties
of bioethics and lifting dossal citations from medical studies, philosophy and
even economic references, Mr. Edeh burrows tangentially through the many
deliberately contrived issues in the divergent worlds of sex education, sex
commerce, human behaviour, pop culture, socio-political sloganeering, religion
and health to come up with a piece of writing that is arguably one of the best
materials to be recommended to anyone, especially people who are actively in
the age of reproduction. Researchers, writers and public speakers will also
find the book very resourceful the way preachers, especially Christian ones
would.
With references and
lucid logic Culture of Death, challenges some hitherto accepted ideas. The book
presents studies that show among other discoveries that condoms may not prevent
the contracting of any sexually transmitted disease whether viral or bacterial
hence cannot prevent the contracting of any sexually transmitted disease
through viral or bacterial agents.
According to the book, the lubricant with which the inner
portions of condoms are lubricated is
“very harmful to health and accounts for up to 90 per cent of infertility problem of our time.”
Condom, Edeh argues, “does not prevent HIV at all.” He
states “that the use of condom increases the chances of contracting HIV up to
99 per cent.”
In the book, Edeh’s expose on the largely but not solely
sexually-communicated killer disease HIV and AIDS comes across as untangling a
knot. According to him, there are two types of HIV, namely: HIV 1 and 2. He
explained that while HIV 1, which is the type present in tropical parts of the
world such as Africa has four groups: M,O,N and P. “Group M alone has further
strains: A,B,C,D,F (f1 & f2), G,H
and K. Someone who is infected with HIV-1M can still be further infected
with O,P,N or any of A,B,C,D… later in life from another source.”
In an argument that sets him squarely on the pro-life side
of the rave global abortion debate, the author writes that the foetus in the
womb, no matter how old is a living creature. “Abortion and the intake of drugs
after sexual intercourse for prevention of pregnancy cause the permanent
imbalance of acid and alkaline level of the body and introduces acute
infections which complication causes many diseases people suffer today,” he
states.
Stemming heavily from ethical philosophy, the author who
received his barchelorate degree in philosophy from University of Port
Harcourt, Nigeria and studied for his master’s degree in bioethics in Ateneo
Pontificio Regina Apostolorum University, Italy reasons on the line of dignity
of human person on the contentious fertility debate. After highlighting the
arguments of such philosophers as Michael Tooley who are indifferent to
abortion, he brigs up the logics of such thinkers as Jon. E. Daugherty; Sanson
M. Staffens; Flore Farcas; Bruce M. Carlson; Jerome Jejune; Daanne Irving;
Edwin Vieria Jr.; Francis Beck; Pope John Paul II; Keith Moore and T.V. Persaud among others to
argue in pages 149 to 155 that “even modern genetic science offers clear
confirmation” that abortion is killing.
The notion of creating human persons in laboratory or
getting male species to conceive and bear child, he reasons “destroys the
argument put down by some philosophers that there is a difference between human
being and human person….received his barchelorate degree in philosophy from
University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria and studied for his master’s degree in
bioethics in Ateneo Pontificio Regina Apostolorum University, Italy reasons on
the line of dignity of human person on the contentious fertility debate.
After highlighting the arguments of such philosophers as
Michael Tooley who are indifferent to abortion, he brigs up the logics of such
thinkers as Jon. E. Daugherty; Sanson M. Staffens; Flore Farcas; Bruce M.
Carlson; Jerome Jejune; Daanne Irving; Edwin Vieria Jr.; Francis Beck; Pope
John Paul II; Keith Moore and T.V.
Persaud among others to argue in pages 149 to 155 that “even modern genetic
science offers clear confirmation” that abortion is killing. The notion of
creating human persons in laboratory or getting male species to conceive and
bear child, he reasons “destroys the argument put down by some philosophers
that there is a difference between human being and human person….
“It presents the excellence of human soul both as different
from human spirit and as image of God.”
Culture of Death serves scholarly materials comprising
philosophic, scientific, and religious argument in the ever controversial issue
of fertility, faith and feminism debate to buttress that human life begins from
fertilization of a woman’s womb.
Edeh equally has engaging logic on the issue of fertility
technology. Through the thrust, he displayed his steep in the knowledge of
extra-natural and artificial human reproduction. Issues relating to the
complicated new age science of baby production through assisted reproductive
technology (ART) such as In Vitro Fertilization (IVF); intracytoplasmic sperm
injection (ICSI); assisted hatching; preimplantation genetic diagnosis;
blastocyst transfer; making men or male gender of mammals become pregnant
through scientific methods and christian canonical positions on the
development, presented Edeh the opportunity to prove his mettle. To this
development he commits the entire Chapter Five of the book (pages 157 to 196).
And within the forty pages, he served a researcher’s thriller, pry bit by
bit into the technologies of making
babies through scientific manipulation of human embryo and unravelling little
known ethical slips.
The book’s edge is in its ability to enlighten richly on
issues of conscience, temperance and sense of concern for human dignity as well
as the roles those factors play or should play in man’s decision making on matters relating to life and death.
However, therein lies the knocks for the work. Many would argue that Edeh’s
steep in Christian philosophy rubs off heavily in his work, making pro-choice
and pro-freedom-in-technology views come up only for extermination not for
thorough consideration. In the forward,
Sylvester Chukwudi Onyeka, a Catholic priest noted the “didactic” but richly
enlightening content of the book.
Notwithstanding some instances of poor edge cutting and ink
blot on some pages (notably, pages 76 and 77 in my copies) the book is well
written with good grammar and lucid sequence of argument. It is a very
commendable 300-page reader worthy of
presence in any home and library.
All these along with rich content and topical subject matter
make Culture of Death a viable resource material for youths in secondary and
tertiary institutions as well as families and churches. Unfortunately, the author,
a Catholic evangelist of the Apostlship of Mary Interventions who holds writing
as a sidekick to his apostolic mission said he printed a limited number of
copies due to paucity of fund. For the philanthropist who really craves to help
society, a look towards Culture of Death may not be out of place.
Post a Comment