The Pros And Cons Of Genetic Engineering

The constant technological advancements that are currently taking place in our world all hold a everlasting price that we ultimately will have to pay. One of the most controversial scientific topics of this decade revolves around the modification of a person’s DNA for benefits, called genetic engineering. With these advancements, not taking the action of responsibility can lead to societal imbalances and problems, as shown in the novel of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley during the creature’s careless upbringing by his creator that leads to his ruthlessness, or today’s argument on whether we should break the natural cycle of life through genetic engineering.
The idea of changing an organism’s genetic makeup may seem unnatural and completely incompatible
Although this has been widely accepted by interbreeding plants and animals, which essentially became the norm, the introduction of changing a human’s genetic makeup is suddenly unacceptable and sparks lots of outrage. The reason for this is because these types of people believe that “changing or ‘messing with’ the human genome is simply not right, [and is] against nature and [is] a highly dangerous path to follow” (The FHE Team). The ethical beliefs of those people are not wrong. Genetic engineering does truly break our natural makeup, and would possibly even redefine what it would mean to be normal. Similarly to the novel Frankenstein, once the creature found out about his creation from Victor Frankenstein’s journal, he was upset that he was not like other people and was rejected by every person that had the ability to see
Luckily, while scientists may be researching about the development of genetic engineering, they are also researching on how to reverse them modifications to establish some safeguards. In an article published by PBS, it states that since scientists are “Aware of this, [scientists] are proposing a number of safeguards, including reversal drives that can undo earlier engineered genes” (PBS). Contrastingly, Victor Frankenstein did not take any precautions before creating the creature. Worse, Victor did not take responsibility for the creature after it was newly-created, and instead ran away from it. This led to the deaths of many people from the uncared creature and Victor’s realization that he must end the creature’s life. Even though “[Victor] pursued him; and for many months this has been [his] task” (Shelly 173), it was too late to take any type of responsibility. And so, Victor dies unsatisfied with