HEAVEN'S JUST A RUMOR SHE'LL DISPEL

ven now, as we approach America's new year's rockin' eve and flag genuflecting begins to near the popularity of Internet porn, there are few things the conventional wisdom can actually come to a concensus on. One that's close enough to call is the idea that human life is sacred. That we are sanctified. The reason I point this out is that a thought occurred to me the other day while watching Steven Spielberg's severely flawed but unfairly maligned "A.I."

The events of the film are set in motion when robot Haley Joel Osment's "family" decides that a sentient, feeling robot is inherently less valuable -- on whatever level -- than a similar human. It's more complicated than that but that's the brunt of it. When I first saw the film last summer, I assumed this was Spielberg (and Stanley Kubrick) pointing out that humanity would be a danger to its creation, rather than the typical "HAL kills the astronauts" scenario. Given Spielberg's recent description of "Minority Report" as "wishful thinking," I now tend to think "A.I." was a filmed greeting card about the superduperness of humanity, but I digress. What occurred to me is that a lot of the crazy futuretech we envision making our lives better and different and, above all, more interesting will require significant human testing. You cannot have sex with a Jude Law-bot until a lot of women and, presumably, men have submitted their nether-parts to a lot of controlled test-poking. Would you volunteer for that? I sure as hell wouldn't, nor would I volunteer to be experimented on with the Ashley Scott-bot. Which begs the question, how are we going to make sure our teleporters and VR jacks and thought projectors are safe?

The answer: we need human livestock. Sure we've got the animals that we're currently using to guess whether or not that new lipstick will make your face fall off but these technologies are not simple chemical reactions waiting to happen. If a device is meant to interact with the human nervous system, plugging it into a rat or even a chimp isn't going to reveal anything.

How many humans would it take to perfect a technology that puts a translucent display right onto my retina? How about a pill matching my metabolism to my food intake? How about a jet pack? Let's say the researchers on one of these projects get 1,000 people from infancy to tinker with. Certain legalities aside, it should be relatively easy to convince 1,000 abortion-seekers to deliver their babies and then sell them to the company for, say, $10,000 each. The scientific community, social activisits on the Right and the Left and probably all of you reading this would find that repellent, so the MP3 player I want to have built into my ear is not likely to happen. You'll never get people to agree to sacrificing any human lives so we can have better gizmos.

Now, let's change the hypothetical a bit. Let's say that 1,000 people, raised and kept as test subjects, can be used to cure multiple sclerosis. To cure congenital heart disease or diabetes or cancer. And I don't mean a series of treatments that might work, I don't mean a life-long reliance on a handful of pills every few hours, I mean a cure. Could people overlook their beliefs -- that it's a vicious and certainly Hell-worthy affront to God -- long enough to kill 1,000 people for the eternal benefit of the other 7,000,000,000 and those yet to come? I think they couldn't, even if somebody ever had the data and the media accessability to say that it was both possible and necessary.

Except that they've already done it a thousand times over and for far lesser gain.

(This is what Steven Spielberg would call the reveal.)

More than 58,000 Americans were killed in the Vietnam War but in reality the nation was prepared to sacrifice several million people for goals that were questionable at best. These were grown-ups -- and yes, let's get over the idea that 18-year olds are children -- with family and friends, their own paths to chart and their own places in the social patchwork. Our 1,000 test infants have no such ancillary damage included in their sacrifice. And unlike the 293 killed to turn Saddam Hussein into our new boogeyman a decade ago, their sacrifice will have a quantifiable and positive effect on the people of today and the world of tomorrow.

In the last nine months we've sacrificed thousands of soldiers, thousands of Afghans, some Israelis, some Palestinians and four Canadians. Your grandfather's prostate is still killing him and your best friend from high school still has to prick her finger every day. What have we gained?

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Aaron Veenstra is the managing editor of Etc. House Productions.
The Fast Lane appears when the muse strikes.