Genetic Engineering

Genetic Engineering

There are many manipulations that humans have done to the environment throughout history in order to benefit mankind. As technology has increased many of these manipulations have begun to take place on a larger scale resulting in more drastic changes to the environment. The first manipulations humans used to benefit themselves were farming and domestication of animals. This was very basic manipulation to the environment and did not make drastic changes to the environment. It was not until the industrial revolution that pollution and people’s negative effects on the environment became very apparent. New technology allowed for people to make changes that could possibly be irreversible upon the environment. With the culmination of drastic changes coupled by the advancement of technology, we have genetic engineering. Genetic engineering is both a threat and a benefit for humans in our continuous strive to manipulate the environment.

The basic uses for genetic engineering include gene therapy, cloning, biological warfare, vaccines and antibiotic, human reproduction, and food production. Most of these uses of genetic engineering have positive results for humans; however there are some areas that have negative results.

Gene-therapy is the alteration of an individual’s genetic material for therapeutic purposes. (Leach, 182) Gene therapy opens the possibility of treating and maybe even curing medical illnesses that people suffer from that until now do not really have effective treatments. A possible use of gene-therapy is to treat people that have genetically inherited illnesses such as sickle cell anemia.

Cloning has become a huge possibility with the effective clone of Dolly the sh...

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With all these different uses of genetic engineering, it gives humans a lot of different choices to change their environment. Some of these choices are obviously harmful, for example biological warfare. There are also some great benefits that can be gained from genetic engineering mainly with gene-therapy. With all these different options government officials and scientists alike are struggling to figure out what areas of genetic engineering should be further developed, and what areas of genetic engineering should be made illegal. It is no longer a question of if something is possible to do, but a question of whether it should be done.

Works Cited

1. David R.F. Leach

(Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Science, Inc, 1996) p. 182

2. M.L. Rantala, Cloning for and Against (Peru, IL: Cara Publishing Company, 1999) p. 9

3. M.L. Rantala, p189