Genetic Engineering: The Solution to Hunger and Disease

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Genetic Engineering: The Solution to Hunger and Disease

In case you were not sure, we don’t live in a perfect world. Millions of people die every year. Two significant causes of death are hunger and disease (I am aware that there are more causes such as war and crime, but they are irrelevant to this essay). There are about 5.6 billion people on earth; all of whom need to eat. However, only a certain amount of food (less that what everyone needs) can be produced. With the use of pesticides, much of the food that is produced is not as nutritional as it could be. Food production costs are also inordinately high due to the crop’s weaknesses to pests, pesticides, and weather fluctuations. On an ascetic level, tomatoes are tasteless. They have little nutritional value because farmers must pick them when they are still green so they won’t be too soft by the time they get to the consumers. On a global scale, millions of people die of starvation every year in third world countries. The worst famine in India killed 3 million people in 1770. Over 100,000 people have perished so far in the current famine going on in Ethiopia and Somalia (Wallace 1065). Disease is the other killer. I need not waste time talking about how many people die of disease because it is extremely common knowledge.

There is hope. Every living organism has deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). It is the genetic code which determines what the organism will be. Recently, scientists have been able to alter an organism’s genome to come up with desired characteristics. This is known as Genetic Engineering (GE). GE is the process of altering biological systems by the purposeful manipulation of DNA. For example, removing the gene which causes rotting in to...

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.... Penelope Barker. Vol. 67 Number 3. The H. W. Wilson Company: New York, 1995.

Weintraub, Pamela. "The Coming of the High-tech Harvest." Audubon. v 92 pp92-103. 1992.

Genetics and Society. Ed. Penelope Barker. Vol. 67 Number 3. The H. W. Wilson Company: New York, 1995.

Hager, Mary, Stryker McGuire, Adam Rogers, and Anne Underwood. "Little Lamb, Who Made Thee?" Newsweek 10 Mar. 1997: 52-59.

Bylinsky, Gene. "Genetics: The Money Rush Is On." Fortune v 129 pp94-108. 1994.

Genetics and Society. Ed. Penelope Barker. Vol. 67 Number 3. The H. W. Wilson Company: New York, 1995.

Concar, David. "The Organ Factory of the Future?" New Scientists v 142 pp24-29. 1994.

Genetics and Society. Ed. Penelope Barker. Vol. 67 Number 3. The H. W. Wilson Company: New York, 1995.

Wallace, Bob, Jerry Sanders, Rob Ferl. Biology, The Science of Life. HarperCollins: New York NY, 1996.

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