Genetic Engineering a Double Helix

As we move on into the 21st century we can look back at all the wonderful achievements we have made in the field of medicine. While nearly all of those advancements have been good, we are sometimes left to wonder about the ethics behind it all. No one will say that helping another person with a disease is wrong; but, they might say that the technique you are using is wrong. There is a moral dilemma involved with issuing placebo’s to patients undergoing a study. While granted they sign up for the study and know that they might well get a placebo they do so in the hope that they get the real treatment. Sometimes it can seem cruel when the patients with the placebo get worse or die while the ones who actually got treated do better. This is a necessary part of advancing medicine. Now that we know that there is at least one medical practice that can be considered wrong, others could be as well. One up and coming method entails altering ourselves at the very genetic level, the most fundamental part of our being. It entails altering our DNA to eliminate or alleviate a plethora of disorders permanently. Is this a good thing? We have a saying, Pride goeth before a fall. This means that those who are arrogant are very likely to fail miserably. Are we going too far in attempts to change our genetic structure? Or are we not doing enough? Robert L. Sinsheimer, chancellor at UCSC describes the power possibilities of genetics as follows, “In Homo Sapiens something new appeared on this small globe. The next step of evolution is ours. We must devise that once again on this sweet planet a fairer species will arise.” (1) (Moraczewski, 101) Is it even our place to decide this? And who will make such evolutionary decisions?

To understand how this powerful new field of medicine works you must first understand how a few related things function. In 1943 Oswald Avery proved that Deoxyribonucleic Acid not protein carried genetic information. (5) The Double Helix structure of DNA wasn’t discovered until 1953 by the combined efforts of James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin. (5) Eventually enough data was collected from each other‘s work that they were finally able to deduce the correct structure. They knew that the phosphates were on the outside of the molecule, and that certain nitrogen bases always occurred in a 1:1 ratio.