Antidote to NYC-Boston Train Stuffiness

Met a guy on the train from NYC to Boston today, name of Anthony Herrera, known as TV's James Stenbeck on "As the World Turns."

He's a cancer survivor, it turns out, on his way to a cancer conference near Harvard (sorry I don't remember the name just yet), and since I was on my way to something similar, we got to talking. (That's him testifying in front of an Appropriations Subcommittee about stem cell research.)

Speaking in bold, actorly tones, Herrera told me about his wrenching, fucked-up encounter with Mantle Cell Lymphoma, chemo and full-body radiation treatment, an ordeal that partly involved several days of "shitting blood," as he aptly put it. During the conversation, I'd caught the glances of some of the other businessy travelers, and got some gallows humor contrasting an earlier exchange two execs were having about marketing strategy or some other inane shit.

Anyway, he was writing an article about stem-cell treatments and cancer for a Republican journal of some kind - he generally wanted to make people think about what you will do if you're desperate to save your own life. Herrera said he'd gladly have iced pretty much anyone during the worst part of his agony, if he thought it would help. Folks with a moral block against stem-cell research are just one terminal disease from changing their minds, he said.

Word.

Now, I don't feel like Herrera and I see eye to eye, politics-wise - although he had me at "Manhattanites are some of the most provincial people in the world" - but I respect straightforwardness. He expanded his critique of objections to stem-cell research to ethicists and policymakers.

It should be clear that desperation cannot be policy. As much as I deplore the 'culture of life', it's about time everyone grapples with what defines a human being. No - not a human 'life', that's evasion.

Roe v. Wade defines human 'life' in terms of its viability - a developing embryo becomes human at the point that it becomes possible for it to survive outside the womb. That's a goalpost that moves with technology, and it has nothing to do with what makes humans - or any other animal, for that matter - worth defending.

There are links to his book and a poetry website with Willie Nelson (!) on his home page.