Genetic Engineering: Boon or Bane?
Jim Meyer
English 1110-90
11/29/2014
Genetic Engineering—Will It Improve the Human Race?
Essay Three-Final draft
THERE is considerable talk about new discoveries in the field of genetics. Mankind is on the threshold of being able to manipulate, and construct organisms for any number of productive reasons. We are within reach of manipulating genetic codes of diverse organisms, or engineering completely new organisms, promising to alter the way we relate to the natural world. With any radical technology, anxiety, ethical and moral objections to genetic engineering proliferate. Some are well-grounded and advise caution; others are the product of misinformation, religious bigotry, or madness. Religious objections assume the existence of some creator whose will is defied by genetic engineering, and secular objections assume that life in its “natural” state, unaltered by human intention, I inviolable because of its inherent dignity. 1 One of the biggest concerns of genetic engineering is that should we determine our evolutionary future? Have we reached such a peak of humanity that we can create and modify lives without fear of exploitation, abuse or neglect? Perhaps.
There has caused a great hullabaloo over genetic engineering. Some advocate it, saying that, in time, scientists may be able to remove from the cell certain sections of the chromosome that contains genes that are defective and replace them, thereby refurbishing or repairing the cell. This would prevent parents from passing on to children genetically transmitted diseases. At the present stage of this new experimental process, such manipulation of the human cell is becoming more evitable. I see modification of the genome as the ‘jenny-out-of-the bottle.’ It cannot be unlearned. Science is an ever forward science. It looks back only to see where it went wrong and learn from that. Science is a discipline that will not and cannot be stopped. The quest to ‘know’ is innate in the human species.
Human cloning has
English 1110-90
11/29/2014
Genetic Engineering—Will It Improve the Human Race?
Essay Three-Final draft
THERE is considerable talk about new discoveries in the field of genetics. Mankind is on the threshold of being able to manipulate, and construct organisms for any number of productive reasons. We are within reach of manipulating genetic codes of diverse organisms, or engineering completely new organisms, promising to alter the way we relate to the natural world. With any radical technology, anxiety, ethical and moral objections to genetic engineering proliferate. Some are well-grounded and advise caution; others are the product of misinformation, religious bigotry, or madness. Religious objections assume the existence of some creator whose will is defied by genetic engineering, and secular objections assume that life in its “natural” state, unaltered by human intention, I inviolable because of its inherent dignity. 1 One of the biggest concerns of genetic engineering is that should we determine our evolutionary future? Have we reached such a peak of humanity that we can create and modify lives without fear of exploitation, abuse or neglect? Perhaps.
There has caused a great hullabaloo over genetic engineering. Some advocate it, saying that, in time, scientists may be able to remove from the cell certain sections of the chromosome that contains genes that are defective and replace them, thereby refurbishing or repairing the cell. This would prevent parents from passing on to children genetically transmitted diseases. At the present stage of this new experimental process, such manipulation of the human cell is becoming more evitable. I see modification of the genome as the ‘jenny-out-of-the bottle.’ It cannot be unlearned. Science is an ever forward science. It looks back only to see where it went wrong and learn from that. Science is a discipline that will not and cannot be stopped. The quest to ‘know’ is innate in the human species.
Human cloning has
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