Genetic Faltering Essay

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Regenerating extinct species, engineering babies that are born without vital body organs, this is what the use of genetic engineering brings to the world.

In Greek myth, an chimera was a part lion, part goat, part dragon that lived in Lycia; in real life, it s an animal customized with genes of different species. In reality, it could be a human-animal mixture that could result in horror for the scientific community. In myth the chimera was taken down by the warrior Bellerophon, the biotech version faces platoons of lawyers, bioethicists, and biologists (Hager).

In this paper, I am going to discuss what has already been done, the unethical side of genetics, and what will happen in the future if we continue to tinker. Genetics pose a major problem to the modern day world. With the deteriorating conditions of the earth today, the use of genetics will further break down our fragile planet.

As of 1998, many experiments have been done in the field of genetics, in the next section, I will discuss a few.

First, genetics came into the public view in the early 1970 s when a scientist named Paul Berg began experimenting with a strain of E.coli bacteria called SV40. (Tagliaferro 69) This was the public beginning to the struggle surrounding genetics. Berg was not very intelligent about the way he conducted his tests, and he was forced to stop, until the National Institute of Health determined that SV40 was harmless to humans. (Tagliaferro 70)

The next major happening in genetics was the Asilomar Conference of 1973. The Asilomar conference was a good start, but it did not set strict enough standards for experimentation, and this caused many harsh, and disruptive experiments. Then in 1975, the second Asilomar conference was held. This conference helped a little, but it still left to much gray area for scientists to play in. (Tagliaferro 70) The Asilomar Conference were a gigantic step forward, but they still left the scientists with to much freedom. The government should have taken control of the industry when it had the chance, but it let the chance slip through its fingers.

After the Asilomar conferences, there were no major advancements until the early 1990 s. In the early 1990 s private companies began experimenting with plants, and pesticides. They modified the plants, and then marketed them as better foods. In 1991 the Food and Drug administration took the products off the market for examination. They deemed the foods to be fine for human consumption (Levine). These new wonder plants were supposed to produce more crops, and use less space, but in reality they only produced an average of 3-5 percent more, and they used the same amount of space as the original plants. The downside to these genetically engineered plants was the pesticides that must be applied to maintain them; some of these if not applied right can cause illness, or even be fatal to certain people.

There were a few small advancements from 1991 to 1997, when a group of British scientists cloned Dolly the sheep. The scientists used part of the original animals DNA, and they expanded upon it to where they had the animal s entire genetic make-up. This procedure shocked the world, in being it was the first known successful cloning. This experiment raised eyebrows, and it upset many people because of the moral lines it crossed. If we can clone sheep, why don t we clone super humans? This question outraged many, and excited many others. In the United States, human cloning is controlled by teach state government, but on a whole, the majority of the states have outlawed cloning experiments, and for good reason. Cloning is a dangerous area that if not controlled properly could result in the end of the human race, as we now know it. Stuart Newman, a cell biologist at New York Medical College has applied for a patent on ways to make human-animal chimeras. Newman doesn t want to do it. He just wants to make sure no one else does, either (Hager).

Second, there are many concerns that surround the field of genetic engineering. These concerns range from moral, to environmental, and the ethics that are involved. These concerns have a lot of backing, and are very severe.

There are about three moral concerns that surround all genetics, they are; what to do with a mistake, can genetic creatures be patented, and are the things that are made free to live, or should they be contained for experimentation.

First, what happens if a geneticist makes a mistake? Well, there are a few options kill it, let it live in a confined area, or let it roam free. All of these options are bad in one way or another. First, if you kill the mistake, you have wasted time, money, and a life. This is the most scorned option of all three. Next, if you let it live in a confined area, you are depriving it of all the basic frills of life. What kind of life is it to be confined in a small cell with no outside excitement? The last option for geneticists is to let the thing live, and go on with its life as normal. This option provides even more ethical questions, so it is shunned by many. Many times the mistakes may not be well equipped for life in the real world. They may not be equipped for the stress of human life.

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