'Stolen Hearts' and Stolen Heart Tissue

Two stories in The Telegraph suggest that we, as a society, have an increasingly self-serving, skewed view of human life. The first story reports that Elton John and his partner David Furnish have had their hearts 'stolen' by a Ukrainian boy, aged 14 months, in an orphanage and have now taken the media around the place to tell everyone how much both would like to adopt him and raise him as their own.

Elton John said, "David and I have always talked about adoption, David always wanted to adopt a child and I always said 'no' because I am 62 and I think because of the travelling I do and the life I have, maybe it wouldn't be fair for the child. But having seen Lev today, I would love to adopt him. I don't know how we do that but he has stolen my heart. And he has stolen David's heart and it would be wonderful if we can have a home. I've changed my mind today. Last week I lost one of my best friends, my keyboard player died of a heart attack at 52. It broke my heart because he was such a genius and so young and has two wonderful children. What better opportunity to replace someone I lost than to replace him with someone I can give a future to.

And knowing the way things happen in the fantastical world of celebrity, he will probably get his way. But it is more than a little worrying that an aging rock star in a homosexual relationship, who tours so much and has always had the flamboyant edge that has endeared him to millions, will considered to adopt a little boy, while children are often removed from families in this country, sometimes very unjustly. The boy has 'stolen their hearts'. It makes it sound as if they have found some cute puppy at Battersea Dogs Home. Secondly, he sees the boy as a replacement for his keyboardist who died recently. Thirdly, he's bringing an adolescent into his homosexual relationship. I'm not sure what circles Elton moves in but I know the guy loves a party. Evidently, by his own words, the expressed decision is all about him, rather than the best interests of the child.

Meanwhile, The Telegraph also reports that 'tens of thousands of samples of human tissue will be offered for use in controversial human/animal hybrid embryo research without the consent of the patients who donated them'. That is, if you go to the NHS for a treatment and some of your bodily/muscle/organ tissue or blood is taken and stored, then parts of you could be used in the horrific human/animal hybrid embryo experimentation so despised by a large proportion of the country (and this is not just limited to Catholics).

These two stories suggest that human life belongs to us, can be possessed by us and can be used to serve our needs. Both of these reports suggest a lack of healthy respect for life born and unborn, of life visible, which we cannot ignore and life hidden in laboratories, of which we hear much less. Elton and David have had their hearts stolen by a Ukranian orphan, who would be stolen from his country of origin and his roots. Our heart tissue can be stolen and used to experiment on bastardised human life in the laboratory and those lives can then be stolen and used for 'scientific and medical advancement'. Parts of those embryos would then be stolen for such purposes and then those embryos would be killed. Somehow, we are moving towards a future in which everything can be owned, everything can be bought or gained by theft and nothing, absolutely nothing, is sacred. The answer to this trend lies in the Heart pictured above.