Human Genetic Engineering
Dustin Pruett
Professor Prince
ENG 1301.3k3
27 April 2016
By Any Means Possible
A small boy destined by his DNA to have Tay-Sachs disease, a terrible genetic disorder that has effected a multitude of newborns worldwide, is born without it. Somewhere, someone suffering from leukemia has their defective bone marrow replaced with fully functioning bone marrow that was cloned from tissue from their very own cells. Elsewhere, a woman born without the ability to carry a child is given the opportunity to have a genetic child of her own. These science fiction sounding scenarios are not a part of the argument for genetic engineering but they definitely should be. There are plenty of concerns when it comes to the topic of human genetic engineering and these concerns are justified. The science of human genetic engineering is evolving and changing at an incredible pace. With this evolution of science comes a number of benefits and risks. These benefits and risks must be looked at clearly in the full light of their moral, spiritual, legal, and ethical perspectives. The immense prospective power of human genetic engineering comes with great responsibility. However, human genetic engineering can be utilized to enhance nearly every part of the human existence. From the earth’s limited resources, curing diseases, stopping genetic disorders before a child is born, and gifting current adults with better lives than they thought possible. No matter the moral questions or ambiguities, society has to push forward with human genetic engineering to create a better life for all humanity.
The rapid development of humanity’s ability to alter and supplement the human genome will, in due course, take us to an auspicious future for the complete planet. Human genetic engineering was not created from the ideology that the natural world should be engineered and perfected by mankind. Rather, its main aim is to improve the quality of life for everyone on this planet. Therefore, it is right to weigh the benefits and the downfalls of this relatively recent medical technology and determine in which ways it can be used to humanity’s best advantage.
With an ever-increasing growth in world population, the Earth’s resources are constantly becoming scarce. According to the United Nations medium projections issued in 1990 (Engineering 2), the global population will be going up from 5.3 billion in 1990 all the way up to 8.5 billion in the year 2025. As a result of that, there will be a much higher demand and need for food, therefore accelerating further depletion of the Earth’s resources. The only way that we can counter act this so far has been the current level use of agricultural technology. However, our current use of pesticides, herbicides, and other chemical fertilizers constitute a grave environmental danger. This is a problem that genetic engineering can answer. With the use of genetic engineering, we could ultimately reduce the amount of potentially dangerous chemical substances we introduce into the environment. Distribution costs would go down with the high efficiency of which we make and ship our foods from farm to market. Thanks to genetic engineering, geneticists are, at this time, able to engineer a super strain of the average grocery store tomato (Biotechnology 3). Using a technique called antisense genetics, the gene that is responsible for allowing tomatoes to soften and ripen can be transformed to produce the opposite effect. The millions and millions of tomatoes that make their way all around the world can consequently be made resistant to the bumps, bruises, and normal abuse of shipping and transport, and also giving them a longer shelf life. This practice could be applied to all other sorts of fruits and vegetables. This would allow for less of a waste of food therefore, putting less of a strain on human resources.
However, human genetic engineering has an answer to this as well. There is a group of scientist that believes that the answer to the dictate of food and other natural resources doesn’t lie in creating a bigger supply. They believe that the answer is lessening the demand. For each amount of mass that a human adult has they need a certain amount of food and nutrients. Therefore, the larger a person is then the larger the amount of food it takes to sustain them. This is not mentioning the other impacts that humans have based on size; car fuel efficiency, more fabric required for clothes, etc. What these geneticists propose is that a size reduction could be one way to reduce a person's ecological footprint. For instance if you reduce the average U.S. height by just 15cm [centimeters], you could reduce body mass by 21% for men and 25% for women, with a corresponding reduction in metabolic rates by some 15% to 18%, because less tissue means lower energy and nutrient needs (Liao 2). Our drain on the limited natural resources on this planet would diminish significantly.