Speech
Genetic Engineering, a Problem for the Human Race
I don’t want to be the person to tell you that genetic engineering is unethical and against morals. I don’t want to say that the ones actually modifying genes are playing God, and that is against most religions. Those ideas will make this subject so much more boring than it already is. There are two main aspects of genetic engineering that are either beneficial or problematic for humans. Those areas are cloning and genetic modified babies, or designer babies. Through the aspects of genetic engineering, I will discuss the problematic consequences that genetic engineering has and will have on humans.
Cloning is the process of taking a cell and copying it to produce the exact same being. This might seem beneficial to humans, except that the success rate is extremely low but improving. Roger Shinn documented an example of cloning with a low success rate. Dolly was the first being that was even cloned. She was a sheep that suffered and died quite early from the process. Roger Shinn noted that there were 277 tries. 29 of those 277 resulted in embryos that survived more than six days, 13 led to pregnancies. 12 were miscarried or died due to malformations. Dolly was the only one who developed properly at birth, but died due to physiological problems. There was also an ibex-goat hybrid clone with the almost exact same results as Dolly. There were 493 cloned hybrids, with seven successful pregnancies, but only one live birth.
Genetically engineered babies, or designer babies, can also cause problems for humans. Having a perfect baby that parents design might be beneficial. There is a problem though. Parents think that there baby will be exactly like they altered it to be. You can give your baby the best genes you want, the ones that would make him perfect and not have diseases. You can make him fit for sports with certain genes. It doesn’t matter about the genes. The genes have to be activated and or learned. You might give your baby increased muscle strength and high lung capacity to be fit for sports. You also give him the guaranteed chance that he won’t develop cancer. Those genes are only going to affect 15% of the actual outcome. Learned traits give another 15% chance of how those genes will develop. The environment plays 70% role in how he genes develop. If you smoke the gene against cancer is void, if he doesn’t practice sports the increased muscle strength for sports is void. The likelihood of the kid actually developing the desired traits is low and then the parents will be unhappy.
There is such a low success rate wit cloning that it makes no sense to do it. The costs of cloning are high and it is not a practice worth wasting money on to try and get the desired effect. Together with high cost and low success rates cloning is not worth the consequences it brings. The consequences are that species are dying to an experiment with no care to the species. Cloning, if 100% successful, takes too much time. People who need a heart will have to wait for their cloned heart to full mature. This goes with all the organs, too. Designer babies offer more problems than cloning. People will start to patent the designer babies and that cause ownership of humans. This will result in a world like Gattaca with the superior race vs. the inferior race. Sandel suggests that “the predicament is that our newfound genetic knowledge may also enable us to manipulate our own nature—to enhance our muscles, memories, and moods; to choose the sex, height, and other genetic traits of our children; to make ourselves better than well. This makes people have natural talents in an unnatural way.” People should earn them and let activate on their own, instead of fast forwarding and skipping the training. Sandel also offers the idea that “Genetic enhancements undermine our humanity by threatening our capacity to act freely, to succeed by our own efforts to consider ourselves responsible—worthy of praise or blame—for the things we do and for the way we are. It is one thing to hit seventy home runs as the result of disciplined training and effort, and something else, something less, to hit them with the help of steroids or genetically enhanced muscles.” Designer babies might also give people the ability to create humans for certain purposes and Gert demonstrated. “Thus together with cloning, it may give rise to a genetically stratified society, as envisioned in Aldous Huxley’s Novel Brave New World. Once this technology is well-developed, it can be used by societies in which power are not governed by ethical restraints. Individuals may be genetically engineered to provide various tasks –e.g., as warriors. Imagine a group of people engineered to be resistant to poisonous gases.”
The problems with genetic engineering are going to change over time. Scientist will figure out ways that they can alter the human genome at a 100% success rate, and then people will start to realize that the process is not that bad. The practice will spread throughout the world, mostly the more developed countries where people can afford it. This causes a huge gap between the rich and poor class and will divide the world as seen in Gattaca. King stated that the altered gene will carry though other generations and cause more problems to the offspring than receiving the desired effect. Sandel made a point about how genetically engineering babies will affect parents. “We usually admire parents who seek the best for their children, who spare no effort to help them achieve happiness and success. Some parents confer advantages on their children by enrolling them in expensive schools, hiring private tutors, sending them to tennis camp, providing them with piano lessons, ballet lessons, swimming lessons, SAT-prep courses, and so on. If it is permissible and even admirable for parents to help their children in these ways, why isn't it equally admirable for parents to use whatever genetic technologies may emerge (provided they are safe) to enhance their children's intelligence, musical ability, or athletic prowess?” Cloning even has its own complications and limitations resulting in the overall health of the cloned species as Conner demonstrates, "It is well established that cloned animals often suffer from developmental problems. Very often these problems prevent the pregnancy from continuing normally and sometimes that cloned offspring that do get born suffer health problems that either kill them in the womb or lead to later ailments in life."
There are some beneficial advantages to genetic engineering. Genetically engineering a human can cure diseases and eliminate future diseases. People can do this through cloning and designer babies. With designer babies, the children have the guarantee that they will not develop the disease. Cloning can be used for those people who have the disease by cloning a human and then using it to harvest the organs in case of a needed organ transplant. Parents who are fallow could also use cloning to have a child as Strong suggests. "Cloning would permit the couple to participate in the creation of a person, and for some infertile couples doing so might have personal meaning; and for some couples, the genetic and biological connection provided by cloning might be regarded as giving their procreation a special significance as an affirmation of mutual love and acceptance."
Allowing fallow parents to have children would be a problem, because they would be able to select multiple traits for the child. They would neglect a certain sex and chose the superior sex over the inferior sex. Parents will use the technologies to see if they would want to have the child because they can see if the child will develop certain traits. This reduces the baby at random practice and increases a parents thoughts on a kid. There will be fewer children because the parents will chose the child that best fits them when that time comes. If the scientists are able to screen and check for the disease, the parents will guilt the scientists into performing a procedure that will remove the certain genes. The scientists will do this, knowing or not if it will affect other genes and cause other more serious problems not anticipated by the parents.
Genetic engineering has its benefits and it has its problems. Sure it can save lives and prevent diseases and give parents the ability to select a perfect child, but is it worth it? Will you risk the chance that it will not turn out the way you expect it to? The problems of genetic engineering outweigh the benefits of genetic engineering and will be more of a problem than a cure.
I don’t want to be the person to tell you that genetic engineering is unethical and against morals. I don’t want to say that the ones actually modifying genes are playing God, and that is against most religions. Those ideas will make this subject so much more boring than it already is. There are two main aspects of genetic engineering that are either beneficial or problematic for humans. Those areas are cloning and genetic modified babies, or designer babies. Through the aspects of genetic engineering, I will discuss the problematic consequences that genetic engineering has and will have on humans.
Cloning is the process of taking a cell and copying it to produce the exact same being. This might seem beneficial to humans, except that the success rate is extremely low but improving. Roger Shinn documented an example of cloning with a low success rate. Dolly was the first being that was even cloned. She was a sheep that suffered and died quite early from the process. Roger Shinn noted that there were 277 tries. 29 of those 277 resulted in embryos that survived more than six days, 13 led to pregnancies. 12 were miscarried or died due to malformations. Dolly was the only one who developed properly at birth, but died due to physiological problems. There was also an ibex-goat hybrid clone with the almost exact same results as Dolly. There were 493 cloned hybrids, with seven successful pregnancies, but only one live birth.
Genetically engineered babies, or designer babies, can also cause problems for humans. Having a perfect baby that parents design might be beneficial. There is a problem though. Parents think that there baby will be exactly like they altered it to be. You can give your baby the best genes you want, the ones that would make him perfect and not have diseases. You can make him fit for sports with certain genes. It doesn’t matter about the genes. The genes have to be activated and or learned. You might give your baby increased muscle strength and high lung capacity to be fit for sports. You also give him the guaranteed chance that he won’t develop cancer. Those genes are only going to affect 15% of the actual outcome. Learned traits give another 15% chance of how those genes will develop. The environment plays 70% role in how he genes develop. If you smoke the gene against cancer is void, if he doesn’t practice sports the increased muscle strength for sports is void. The likelihood of the kid actually developing the desired traits is low and then the parents will be unhappy.
There is such a low success rate wit cloning that it makes no sense to do it. The costs of cloning are high and it is not a practice worth wasting money on to try and get the desired effect. Together with high cost and low success rates cloning is not worth the consequences it brings. The consequences are that species are dying to an experiment with no care to the species. Cloning, if 100% successful, takes too much time. People who need a heart will have to wait for their cloned heart to full mature. This goes with all the organs, too. Designer babies offer more problems than cloning. People will start to patent the designer babies and that cause ownership of humans. This will result in a world like Gattaca with the superior race vs. the inferior race. Sandel suggests that “the predicament is that our newfound genetic knowledge may also enable us to manipulate our own nature—to enhance our muscles, memories, and moods; to choose the sex, height, and other genetic traits of our children; to make ourselves better than well. This makes people have natural talents in an unnatural way.” People should earn them and let activate on their own, instead of fast forwarding and skipping the training. Sandel also offers the idea that “Genetic enhancements undermine our humanity by threatening our capacity to act freely, to succeed by our own efforts to consider ourselves responsible—worthy of praise or blame—for the things we do and for the way we are. It is one thing to hit seventy home runs as the result of disciplined training and effort, and something else, something less, to hit them with the help of steroids or genetically enhanced muscles.” Designer babies might also give people the ability to create humans for certain purposes and Gert demonstrated. “Thus together with cloning, it may give rise to a genetically stratified society, as envisioned in Aldous Huxley’s Novel Brave New World. Once this technology is well-developed, it can be used by societies in which power are not governed by ethical restraints. Individuals may be genetically engineered to provide various tasks –e.g., as warriors. Imagine a group of people engineered to be resistant to poisonous gases.”
The problems with genetic engineering are going to change over time. Scientist will figure out ways that they can alter the human genome at a 100% success rate, and then people will start to realize that the process is not that bad. The practice will spread throughout the world, mostly the more developed countries where people can afford it. This causes a huge gap between the rich and poor class and will divide the world as seen in Gattaca. King stated that the altered gene will carry though other generations and cause more problems to the offspring than receiving the desired effect. Sandel made a point about how genetically engineering babies will affect parents. “We usually admire parents who seek the best for their children, who spare no effort to help them achieve happiness and success. Some parents confer advantages on their children by enrolling them in expensive schools, hiring private tutors, sending them to tennis camp, providing them with piano lessons, ballet lessons, swimming lessons, SAT-prep courses, and so on. If it is permissible and even admirable for parents to help their children in these ways, why isn't it equally admirable for parents to use whatever genetic technologies may emerge (provided they are safe) to enhance their children's intelligence, musical ability, or athletic prowess?” Cloning even has its own complications and limitations resulting in the overall health of the cloned species as Conner demonstrates, "It is well established that cloned animals often suffer from developmental problems. Very often these problems prevent the pregnancy from continuing normally and sometimes that cloned offspring that do get born suffer health problems that either kill them in the womb or lead to later ailments in life."
There are some beneficial advantages to genetic engineering. Genetically engineering a human can cure diseases and eliminate future diseases. People can do this through cloning and designer babies. With designer babies, the children have the guarantee that they will not develop the disease. Cloning can be used for those people who have the disease by cloning a human and then using it to harvest the organs in case of a needed organ transplant. Parents who are fallow could also use cloning to have a child as Strong suggests. "Cloning would permit the couple to participate in the creation of a person, and for some infertile couples doing so might have personal meaning; and for some couples, the genetic and biological connection provided by cloning might be regarded as giving their procreation a special significance as an affirmation of mutual love and acceptance."
Allowing fallow parents to have children would be a problem, because they would be able to select multiple traits for the child. They would neglect a certain sex and chose the superior sex over the inferior sex. Parents will use the technologies to see if they would want to have the child because they can see if the child will develop certain traits. This reduces the baby at random practice and increases a parents thoughts on a kid. There will be fewer children because the parents will chose the child that best fits them when that time comes. If the scientists are able to screen and check for the disease, the parents will guilt the scientists into performing a procedure that will remove the certain genes. The scientists will do this, knowing or not if it will affect other genes and cause other more serious problems not anticipated by the parents.
Genetic engineering has its benefits and it has its problems. Sure it can save lives and prevent diseases and give parents the ability to select a perfect child, but is it worth it? Will you risk the chance that it will not turn out the way you expect it to? The problems of genetic engineering outweigh the benefits of genetic engineering and will be more of a problem than a cure.