In “Genetically Modified Humans? No Thanks,” the author Richard Hayes is responding to Ronald M. Green’s article on gene therapy. Hayes is a visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley and has a Ph.D. in Energy and Resources. He has also addressed the United Nations about banning human cloning worldwide. The author argues against using genetic therapy in human research because of the risk it provides for human rights. He believes that it will likely result in the escalation of social inequality. Hayes is wrong, but also right at the same time. He is right about how gene manipulation has the potential to cause some real harm, but is wrong about how people should never use genetic technologies.…
“Germline engineering, which is not currently used therapeutically but which is being studied, is a more controversial practice in which genes in eggs, sperm or very early embryos are modified.” The author is concerned that some people may see this as “playing God” but I do not think that is the case all of the time.…
On one hand, it seeks to root out the cause of diseases which have no cure, rather than only treating its symptoms. However, treatments vary from disease to disease. In the case of cystic fibrosis, the effects of treatment do not last very long, and in SCID-X1, the treatment has led to risks of leukaemia. There is an ethical concern that it could modify human capabilities, thus altering the standards of normal human life. Gene therapy is also a very expensive form of treatment and hence should be regulated effectively. Gene therapy has a remarkable therapeutic potential (14) and this should be exploited. Through effective research and regulation, gene therapy has the potential to cure genetic diseases, eliminate any possible side effects and usher in a new standard of…
Genetic modification is becoming closer and closer to an everyday possibility. With this possibility comes a whirlwind of possible effects, both positive and negative. There has been a history of opposition towards these technologies, oftentimes because of fear that the capabilities would be abused. However, the potential that newborns could be born free of hereditary diseases outweighs the fear of “designer babies”.…
With the development of genetic modification scientists have created a chicken that has a dinosaur leg in a reverse evolution experiment, a goat that produces spider silk, featherless chicken, glow in the dark cats, sheep and monkeys and recently in February 2016 British scientists were granted permission to genetically modify human embryos. Just as Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire and his son Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire created malformations in chicken embryos, scientists in the 21st century are creating malformations in animals in the name of science – for “the good” of human beings. Wherever a person situates themselves in time, whether it is in the 18th century or 21st century, people need to understand that there will always be consequences for what we choose to do with the knowledge we gain. Knowledge can create and knowledge can destroy- both in the physical realm and in the moral realm. Morally speaking, knowledge can change how individuals (and collectively human beings) view themselves in the world and how individuals view other animals and material things in the…
Human genetic engineering is the process by which the human genome is being modified and manipulated in order to remove or select certain genes. Moreover, traits that are desirable can be selected, and preventing the genetic causes of diseases is possible. Human genetic engineering, as a new field, has raised a lot of questions and ethical issues. I argue about where we should put the limits for our genetic editing. Should we just use it to prevent harmful diseases or can we carry on with the modification and choosing the desirable traits of our future generations? Who decides? Who has the right to object? I will try my best to provide reasonable answers to those questions throughout my series of blogs, based on scientific articles that talk about its controversial and ethical aspects.…
DNA Databases • What is GATTACA? • Gene chips and newborns? 14. A family Disease • Discuss the mutations BRCA1 and 2 15. Genetic Modification •…
As the Dalai Lama said, “The rapid increase in human knowledge and the technological possibilities emerging in the new genetic science are such that it is now almost impossible for ethical thinking to keep pace with these changes” (Dalai Lama 133). Society needs to be able to be reasonable about the use of a new technology if it the ethics surrounding it is not right. There needs to always be an emphasis placed on the problems that theses technology bring in order to prevent a person ’s right from being taken away from them due to that technology. This requires that here is always reason-forcing conversation when the use of a new technology is being…
Modifying genes could be a way of preventing unwanted traits or enhance characteristics (Against Designer Babies, Sheldon Krimsky). Unfortunately, CRISPR is a first generation tool, so there is no possibility no damage will be done to the baby. As well as no security, the baby will not have any life-threatening defects, as it is known that “curing” one disease causes another. In fact, this will create a bad relationship between parents and children (The Ethnic of ‘Designer Babies’, Tia Ghose), since the children have no choice in being modified. Using babies to alter their characteristics is using them as science experiments since there are over one hundred genes that account for each trait and fifty genes account for three percent of one gene (Against Designer Babies, Sheldon Krimsky). With many parents willing to allow these experimentations to occur on their baby, it will come at a huge…
Genetic engineering often gets a bad rap with changing the natural evolutionary cycle, but it could, with proper guidance, improve almost every aspect of daily life. Advances in the Biotech Revolution have made many things that we had merely considered to be science fiction or a thing of dreams are now possible.The fact of the matter is that genetic engineering is applicable to everyday life while still being ethical and inline with people’s morals.…
Despite rapid scientific progress, many people of the public feel somewhat excluded from the debate surrounding the application of science in new technologies and products. Moreover, as scientific progress becomes increasingly fundamental to society, it is becoming equally difficult to stop it from clashing with long-held ethical values. One common and long standing debate is gene therapy. In 2005, a public survey was conducted to see people’s attitudes towards human gene therapy and while 82% stated that they would accept somatic therapy for major illnesses like heart disease, only 64% supported…
No matter what, these diseases will still spread until there is a cure, most likely not even then. Is this really a bad thing? This child went from an 40 to 80% chance that it was going to have breast cancer to… Only 12%, Stated in how much can we decide about babies genes?. This is great, but after all of the pain and stress you have over this procedure being done, and CRISPR possibly clipping one of your genes ( can lead to even worse diseases; cystic fiber and risk of different cancer) You STILL have a 12% chance. 12% is not much of a percentage vs. 40%, but it is still a 12%, meaning that out of 12% of people still would have breast cancer after the gene clipping, you may not think it would happen to you, but the thing is that the same 12% of people who got breast cancer from genes as well as people who got cancer through environmental factors, thought, I most likely won't get breast cancer now, but they get it . The most scariest thing is that scientist don't know how or why there would still be a 12% chance, so where is it coming from? Joy Larsen Haidle, president of the National Society of Genetic Counselors said “ it also caused a number of unintended, "off-target" effects on some parts of the genome. These changes could lead to other genetic complications, some of which could be fatal.” This quote includes an example of how side-effects of CRISPR can be more harmful than the disease you are…
A disadvantage to using gene therapy is that there is a small amount of knowledge on it. A large amount of people does not understand how gene therapy fully works or the safety issues it causes. Another con is that doctors do not know how long gene therapy will be able to work. Clinical trial results are only short term and show a small amount of benefits (NLCATP, 2014). A moral drawback is that religious groups feel as if it shouldn’t be used because it changes your genetic makeup. With more research, these disadvantages shouldn’t pose a problem in the future of gene therapy and the cure for Cystic Fibrosis.…
The science of today can create super baby's, which Huxley predicted by engineering everyone through conditioning. The debate between nature vs nurture has battled for over a century and half, as to whether genes or environment play a role in human nature. Steven Pinker a Canadian psychologist, says that genes are the reason for human behavior. Pinker reinforces his idea by talking about children, “[Anyone with a] child knows that kids come into the world with certain temperaments and talents” (Pinker, 2003). Environmental factors do not play a detrimental role in the development of children, the genes determine how the child will work. Some genes may cause children to have a bad temper, while other genes may make children behave. To edit genes was thought of as a game changer, to be able to remove unwanted traits such as the cancer gene or make people immune to every known bacteria and virus known to man. Today there is CRISPR or Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat. According to Harvard University “CRISPR changed not only the way basic research is conducted, but also the way we can now think about treating diseases” (CRISPR, para 1). Humans can edit genes in other humans to remove genes that are thought as being unworthy or useless. CRISPR can be similar to Brave New World but because of ethics and regulations on changing and or…
Despite the therapeutic advancement, clinical translation of CRISPR-Cas9 faces outstanding challenges, basically in terms of the safety and efficacy of these treatments, translatability of in vivo delivery methods, potential immunogenicity and the delivery vectors used 8.First, a major challenge in therapeutic genome-editing technologies is the potential for off-target effects which mostly result into permanent genetic modification leading to introduction of unwanted mutations.These may impact potential toxicity to the target host 3. Additionally, undesired modifications may lead to the functional loss of a particular gene and also result into reduced fitness of the edited cells. 2. For example, cancer may arise from mutations in tumour suppressor,…