Can of Worms

Yesterday, I opened a can of worms. It was not my intent to open a can of worms... I don't particularly like worms in cans... I think they belong in the ground, tilling the soil and doing what worms do... but however inadvertently, open a can of worms I did.

I was having a conversation with a customer in his late-40's who seemed to feel that his $80k per year salary could be replaced with a $150,000 life insurance policy if he died. In trying to get him to understand that we are none promised a tomorrow, I mentioned the untimely death of Dana Reeve. The sermon that ensued set me back on my heels and I was so stunned that I could hardly speak.

Customer: "Well, I have religious issues with her and that husband of hers. The fact that they want to take stem cells from embryos and practically grow them as a crop to be harvested is just wrong" and on and on and on he went about the "evil" that Dana and Christopher perpetrated.

It sounded to my ears almost as if he was saying that the reason they both died was because of their beliefs about embryonic stem cell research. Surely that cannot be? Surely there are not people in this world who believe that God metes out a death sentence to those who dare push the bounds of science in an effort to save and restore lives.

Now, far be it from me to get into the bio-ethics of a concept so complicated -- that's not my intent here. I just never thought that in the course of doing business I would come face to face with such vehement, vitriolic "stuff" -- and this from a self-professed "man of God."

I guess I should consider the source, as this came from a man who referred to the prospectus for his funds as a precipitous.