OK, so this is a pretty
controversial
topic at the moment
so I thought I’d
put in my views about
it. I don’t know
an awful lot, but probably
more
than your average person,
so I’ll put
forth my stance and
what I feel is
acceptable and unacceptable.
One thing that sickens
me about
genetic engineering
for financial
gain is the idea that
wealthy corporations are selling one
generation crop seeds
to people in third world countries. This
means that the seeds
of crop e.g. rice have been genetically
modified so that after
one season, they die, and the farmers
have to return to the
sellers to buy more seeds thus creating a
dependence on the providers
and a endless cycle of poverty.
This money is often
result of donation, so the money given out of
good hearts is used
for good – food, but the product is faulty, so
that the rich can get
more money out of the poor. Come on,
how can you cheat the
poor? Genetic engineering in this manner
I find totally immoral.
Is there any need in this world for seeds to
last only one year cycle?
How about the idea that companies
could one day seize
all the commercially sold of a certain crop
e.g. wheat, and only
dish out stuff that lasted one cycle, or could
not reproduce.
What company would we trust with all the wheat in
the world? Already
there are problems of power, money, and
greed. How high could they charge for seeds of wheat, which
were once free, or very
cheap for seeds of crops that lasted more
than one harvest?
Crops that could reproduce?
At the moment, I can’t
see any reason for this kind of genetic
engineering. Injecting
cells from animals to make a tomato last
a few days longer, great…
is it really necessary? I think not. But
then I think, why not?
The world seems to all be living for money
these days, why don’t
we just go along with it. Any way to improve
the quality of life.
But in doing so, we are destroying other
lives. The countless
animals that will be destroyed for testing.
Sure, we eat them, but
what happened to a time that we only took what
we needed from the earth,
and what we took we took with great
respect. I doubt
anyone would think twice for the poor beast they
ate for dinner.
But that’s a totally different topic.
OK, so I’ve established
that I don’t agree with genetic engineering
if it’s simply to alter
crops etc but what about genetic engineering
for medicine e.g. insulin
for diabetics. First it was extracted from
a dog and then biochemists
managed to reproduce it in a purer
form that was injected
into humans. Now it’s made in bacteria by
genetic engineering
and available to those who need it. So is
this necessary?
I don’t know what your argument is, but recently
when in a discussion
about this in class, the teacher personalised
it completely and used
a student who has diabetes in our year
level. She asked
us genetic engineering, or she dies. How do we
choose if it’s so personal?
The thing is, we can’t choose from an
objective point of view,
because no one is objective, we are all
influenced by something
and that gives us good and bad ways of
judging things.
So because of this, I say yes to medical research
in any way related to
genetic engineering because I want people
to live and fewer people
to suffer when it could be medically
possible for them to
be fully normally functional.
“genetic engineering…this
technique is called cloning, because it
uses clones of organisms
or cells. it has great economic and
medical potential
and is the subject of active research.” is an
extract from microsoft’s
encarta, and even whatever your stance
on their accuracy, I
think that you will agree with the latter part of
the extract about the
economic and medical potential. So it is
cloning, of cells.
Is it morally right? Is a cell a life? Who knows?
If a cell is a life,
and we are made up of millions of cells, are
we made of millions
of lives? I suppose it depends on what would constitute as a life.
And whether or not an induvidual believes in
a soul etc. Yet
another topic. But then this leads us to the
question of whether
or not we should interfere with the natural
order of things?
Where do we draw the line?
What if we would a way
so that our cells
would stop ageing at
a certain age?
Could we become
immortal? When
we get to these morality
questions, it
doesn’t take very long
before the
idea settles into our
minds,
and what was sci-fi
becomes reality.
Once upon a time the
idea of creating
human life in a laboratory
was absurd,
freakish. We know
it as Frankenstein
and we called it a monster.
Now the
time is upon us that
such monsters exist.
Not publicly yet, sure,
but there
is no doubt in my mind
that it’s been
attempted in the last
20 years. It’s
only now that scientists
are appealing
to the american government
[and
others to their own
governments] to
have their ‘research’
fully funded. I am not american, do I really
have a say in what goes
on? No, but it’s my world too. What’s going
to happen to the fuck
ups and ‘mistakes’ that cloning will produce.
They had countless mistakes
when they cloned animals are they going
to be terminated?
And for the ones that do work, it’s likely that
the one’s that are not
severely deformed will be carried to term,
what quality of life
will they have? Constantly under testing to
see if they’re functional,
how they’re growing the rate of healing, everything will be under scrutiny,
and when this goes public, the
whole world will be
watching.
So the race is now on
to see who can create the first human
being. I remember
last year [I think it was last year, it was on
the news anyway] the
outrage at the scientist that created the
first life form from
scratch [publicly of course who know otherwise]
it was some really simple
organism the simplest I think, but
anyway, imagine when
they create more complicated things from
scratch. will
they ever create a human completely from scratch?
what I mean is they
work out the DNA crap and reproduce it
completely artificially.
New Zealand as of yet
has not promoted her status on the
cloning issue – no law
has been passed banning it, so we are
currently open to it.
So we’re going to clone a human being.
What for? It hardly
seems to be a valid question anymore and
trying to resist this
technology will only delay it. It’s something
that will never go away.
One of those unanswered highly
controversial things
that people are dying to know. But is it really
worth it? Is the
preservation of one life worth the lives of others?
cloning from adults
is currently possible, but this leads to
complications as the
baby clone will have adult genes and
therefore has a shorter
life span. This public cloning will be done
using embryo’s genes
as they will be as close a match as
possible to the age
of the clone. Once the gene is extracted, the
embryo will be discarded.
A human life destroyed for science.
The clones will now
have a blueprint and as more can be made of
the clones. But
what for? There seems to be many explanations
but is it really necessary?
It seems to me that it’s just a
technology race for
the first country to successfully achieve it
publicly. Reminds
me of nuclear warfare and look where that got us…