Genetic Engineering Essay, Research Paper

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For many years, man has been advancing his race through technology. Many things through those were questionable and questionable, but none are close to a certain technology today. And that would be genetic engineering. What exactly is genetic engineering? To put it shortly, it is where scientists splice, alter, and manipulate genes of one thing to how the scientist want it, and even insert that gene into a foreign host. This technological tool is too powerful for us to handle. It is advancing faster than we can expect. Because of this fact, genetic engineering raises many moral and ethical issues while also showing signs of many dangers. This controversially technology could be looked at two ways, one religiously and the other, scientifically and economically.

First, let?s talk a religious point of view on genetic engineering. With the current knowledge we have today in genetic engineering, life can easily be created and manipulated to one?s liking. How can one ?Play God? by creating and altering life at one?s will and not at all feel guilty? Haven?t we learned that trying to be on a level as God is a punishable act? Such examples are ones such as the destruction of Babylon. People at that time tried to build a tower high enough to reach God, but it was destroyed, a punishment by God that warned us of what will happen if we tried to get powerful as him. People say that God gave us the knowledge to discover. If this is so, did God give us the knowledge to make the atom bomb so we could wipe out cities and vast lives in an instant? Did God give us the knowledge to make deadly biological weapons to kill each other with? And did God give us the knowledge to be so advance in warfare today that the world could be destroyed in minutes? God did not give us the knowledge to do these things or for genetic engineering. Man ignorantly chooses his own way and chooses to venture out doing things that are wrong. So who are we to decide what sex a baby should be, how it should look, and what skills it might have? These are just few of the many questions raised in a religious point of view.

Next, is the scientific and economical view. One goal of genetic engineering is to make products more efficient. Things such as crops and other plants are one of the things that have been experimented on and even released into the environment. This is especially dangerous because scientists are not fully sure of what could go wrong. A genetically altered crop or plant could become dominant and take over all of the its like species and become a problem such as becoming major pests. There have been many cases where non-indigenous plants introduced into a different environment served no use and became major pest problems. But even more dangerous altered plants are genetically altered humans. The functions of all the genes are not known, only these of a very small percentage of the total genes in organisms such as humans. So why would a scientist take a risk, not knowing the full potential dangers it might cause, such as having an effect on other genes?

Privacy is another major concern. What if a sing drop of a person?s blood could reveal all the faults of that person? When will we wake up in a world where everyone has permanent records of what defect will come up in their lifetime and what other things they are susceptible of getting. What if insurance companies got hold of these records? Could people be refused of health insurance because of these facts? There are many examples where people have been refused of some health care because of genetic screening. Not only that, in a recent poll in Time magazine, a question was asked if a person whose genetic profile shows potential problems pay higher health-insurance rates than someone whose profile does not? Only 8 % answered yes while the majority 88% said no. Obviously even the majority of this nation does not want to be genetically profiled.

One recent controversy that has come up is cloning. With some DNA of an organism, scientists are able to make and exact copy of that organism. A sheep and a monkey have already been successfully cloned, and with the current technology, humans could also be cloned. This raises the most ethical and moral issues because many questions would be raised about the clone. What will be the purpose of making exact human copies? We might even get to a point where humans are cloned for specific duties or even cloned for body parts needed by organ recipients. Would rights would that clone have? Maybe the same as everyone or maybe not. Again, this is something that we as humans should never experiment with or even attempt.

To conclude, genetic engineering is a tool that is too powerful for any man to handle. It is too dangerous and crosses many moral and ethical issues. Do we want to perfect ourselves to immortality? Such things are not meant to be handled by mere mortals such as us. We should let nature take its course as it has been for over many successful generations.