Use Of Genetic Engineering Essay Research Paper

Use Of Genetic Engineering Essay, Research Paper

Some may say that genetic engineering must be regulated. Others remark that genetic engineering must be halted. Still others say that God will punish those who entertain the idea of altering God s creation. Despite all of the negativity and disagreement on this rapidly advancing technology, genetic engineering should persevere. Through the infantile technology of genetic engineering, disease will cease and desist, people will live longer and healthier lives, and experience a dramatic increase for the better in quality of life. Suppressing this nascent technology will most definitely create an underground for scientific testing and implementation. History has proven that withholding knowledge from the people will only cause curiosity and fascism. To add to the overwhelming support for the existence of genetic engineering, in these United States people have the right to privacy and the right to do as they wish with their own bodies as afforded to them in the fourth amendment. It is for these reasons that preserving and cultivating genetic engineering is imperative to the wellbeing of everyone.

In 1970, scientists first learned that genes could be moved. By the middle of the 1980s genetically altered mice, pigs, and cows were patented. Genetic engineering was first implemented in humans in 1991 when a girl with what is commonly referred to as bubble boy syndrome had a gene in her body altered which initiated the creation of T cells to combat disease. By far the most well known experiment of genetic engineering came in 1996 when a sheep named Dolly was born. Time passed as testing was performed to make sure the newborn sheep was not one of a kind, and it was soon known that the experiment had produced a clone of a six year-old sheep. With these experiments came a new frontier which is only now being realized and the vast majority of information is still unknown. Just around one hundred genes have actually been related to specific deadly diseases. But don t mistake this relatively low output of research and development for laziness. Instead picture it as a precursor for far greater developments.

Imagine a world where a person with any type of ailment can stop by his geneticist and eliminate the disease at the root of the problem, in the DNA. At present this kind of technology is unavailable, but this is the potential which the technology presents. Already genetic engineering has effectively been able to grow skin for a woman whose gas heater had blown up in her presence. While burns as severe as hers usually take 130 days of hospitalization to nurture, doctors first grafted a portion of unburned skin, cloned it, and applied the new skin to her body. This allowed the woman to leave the hospital after just 46 days. The technology is so impressive that it can grow four acres of skin from a piece of skin of about two inches by two inches. Right now if yellow fever was to break out, the vaccines stored in all the world would be exhausted in just a few days. Right now AIDS is just beginning to explode, and the two million people already dead occurred while the disease was a baby. Right now the Ebola Virus is breaking out again in Africa. What will happen when these diseases are unleashed and the world is subject to their wrath. Wouldn t these diseases be much more easily prevented if the chance of a baby being infected with such a disease were eliminated before birth. With gene therapy, people will be able to eliminate any risk of fatal and near fatal diseases while their babies are still just one-celled organisms. Furthermore, scientists have already created fruit flies which have a doubled life span, increased roundworm lifespans by seventy percent, and raised rodents which live to the equivalent of 160 human years. Genetic engineering is a means for extending life, not just prolonging it. Scientists seek to eliminate the diseases which cause aging. Their goal is not just to create sixty-five more years of living in a nursing home. One man s, Michael Rose, ultimate goal is to create a modern day Methuselah, a person who will be able to live to 969 years young. This may sound ridiculous but already scientists have identified organisms which do not age, including bristlecone pine trees, sea anemones, rockfish, and some shellfish. The goal of genetic engineers now is to identify the genes which prevent aging in these organisms and translate them into human DNA. In light of all of the positive outcomes for the betterment of human life, there is no reason why genetic engineering should not be embraced.

To add to the arguments for genetic engineering, whenever there is a suppression of knowledge, there is also a rebellion. The slaves of colonial America were not allowed the privilege of reading or writing. Slowly this knowledge began to leak into the slave colonies. When the knowledge reached the slaves, because if people want to know they will go to endless lengths to obtain it, they began to rebel. One of the most well known examples is Fredrick Douglass. When Douglass had been taught to read by his master s wife against his masters will he began to think and reason. He joined with the abolitionist movement in his ideology. He realized the hope he had for being free. He was then sent farther South where a renowned slave breaker would attempt to break Douglass. Douglass refused to snap, knowing what he did. This slow educati