Genetic Engineering

Where do you stand with genetic engineering? On the one hand it can help to fight diseases such as cancer, but on the other it's already starting a sliding scale of "designer babies", so far there have been cases where babies have been born for the sole purpose of being doner (did I spell that wrong??) matches for ill siblings. In the future will this lead to picking eye colour, hair colour etc?

Should human beings mess around with such things or should we leave it to evolution (or God depending on your personal beliefs)?

Is it right to mess with the laws of nature? Or is it an inevitable part of our development? Discuss please!




IMPORTANT: Please respect other people's opinions, and no implying that others are stupid for what they believe, thank you! :D :D

 

Well. My take one the idea is that, when it comes to medicine and ways to save lives or better knowledge in research of unknown things. Then I am fine with it, I like the idea of being about to research well beyond what we know and this could be the way to go about it.
The "designer babies" I will say that will bring us to be like the society of Brave New World by Huxley. Where we will be medicated drones with little freedoms to interact as we please. It will become a segregated society by weather you are born by "customization" or a "chance baby". The idea of playing god weather there is one or not, I think should not happen at all, we are playing fate, and that is a line that should not be crossed. It will seriously harm society when people who think and are better compared to workers.

 

Well, saving peoples' lives is a good thing. I support genetic engineering. With the baby that donates body parts...people DO NOT have to make them. Just making a body part (through cloning) is good enough. Genetic engineering should only be done for saving lives.

 

I so agree with that! I think t is awful how some parents have a baby to be a marrow doner or whatever they need! :(


xroadtothedawnx I think those are very good points! The idea of segregation as a result is not something I'd thought of! Interesting, :)

 

Good luck making a body part that can be preserved. Honestly, I don't believe a single limb will ever be able to be effectively preserved for more than maybe a week. They'd have to make the body part and then IMMEDIATELY replace it before patient died.

To me, this debate is the sole moral of the movie, The Island, in which a company makes clones of people for the sole purpose of replacing body parts. Problem is, the clones are completely conscious and aware of their surroundings. I think that's what it will come down to with genetic engineering, assuming we pursue a path of cloning. I think we should just stick to curing things, not preventing them and not creating them... Messing with babies, to me, is just as bad as trying to make clones.

 

I believe that there is a way to preserve a body part for longer than a week and people are able to live without limbs. But it is not just for limbs per-se, but also for internal organs and such which are capable of being created and preserved. But with the baby thing, I don't want to world to turn into, A Brave New World, after reading that, it seems like a possiblity that if the technology for it is perfected the world would take, which is a scary thought.

 

Body-harvesting, although still a moral issue to many people, solves this problem. They basically grow bodies without heads so these bodies don't attain a sense of consciousness.

The question now is, brain or not, would that body still be considered, or valued as a human life? Descartes would say otherwise, but he's a little raw and outdated. But truthfully, I don't know how to answer that question.

I'm fine with some forms of genetic engineering like gene-therapy, but when it starts becoming an issue of using other people's lives for the sake of research, it's such a huge gray area and can too easily overstep the limits.

 

WTF? Is that true?? that's so wrong though, but no wait grown? So are they people or not? That is just weird (and not a good weird)

 

Concerning medicines, anatomy, and human study I have absolutely no problem with--I would actually consider doing something in Biology-Genetics during college, possibly. I want us to gain knowledge of this so we know how it works.

On the artificial evolution hand, I think it's ridiculous. There's no point, it's just going to disrupt mankind, cause wars, and make us all regret it. Plus, it's very disturbing to know it could come to the point where we are making babies based on what the parents want, like a request. It's stupid. It'll throw off the cycle of evolution a bit, maybe (MAYBE :P). Same thing with body-harvesting like Soushi said, I see why they'd do it but, honestly, it's horrible. I'd hate to see such things or hear about such things. -_-

 

We don't need clones to grow body parts, so body-harvesting is a ridiculous thing to implement into our lives anyway. Scientists can already grow body parts, so why make useless humans to do it for us?

 

the problem is that there is a line that will be crossed and when that happens there will be no stopping what will be done. i think that so-called tailor made children are wrong, parents should take what they get and be grateful. maybe eliminating birth defects by genetic engineering but leaving meaningless things like hair/eye/skin colour alone, as nature intended so to speak.

 

Without birth defects, our population will grow so rapdily that the Earth will be destroyed by us overusing its materials. Birth defects are there to kill us, same as diseases. By stopping these, we destroy the Earth in the long run.

I say no for ever on genetic engineering.

 

then have fewer children, its called birth control. im just saying make life for the children that are born better by eliminating the possibility of birth defects (i really dont know what im takling about here, but i think that makes some kind of sense:D)

 

well....i personally wouldn't mind being genetically enhanced. in fact, i would love to be genetically enhanced. i dont' see wat the big deal is when ppl say it's immoral.

 

You are playing God, we are not supposed to tamper with stuff like that, society will collapse under it. Think about it, you have geneticly enhanced people and non-geneticly enhanced people. I am pretty sure that will segregate society more then it may be, you have people who think they are better then other because they are "perfect" compared to normal people.

 

And with all our advancements in medical technology, we're already accomplishing that. I agree, messing with the human genome is surely something we don't need to do. We can't predict all the problems that may manifest it the presence of such procedures. Plus, we're already indefinitely sure of some that it would cause.

 

I wouldn't mind living in a world where we were free of disease, had a larger life expectancy, and where a couple would know that they could always have a healthy child. But utopias are never such things. While the former would put an end to a lot of the misery we see in the world today, we're a very stupid species for as intelligent as we claim ourselves to be. The water in this field is still murky in terms of what should or shouldn't be done. We need to resolve other issues around us before we set out to look at the ones within.

 

i read a book about that 'Clone', where in the future men were sterile so people had to be cloned and if you had enough money you could alter the clone so society ended up tiered, with 1st and 2nd class clones and then the unmodified.

 

I am sure that no one would mind it, but the fact of the matter is our planet is overpopulated as it is, and I think disease and death are the only things that are keeping us all in check. Without it the earths population would grow exponetially and soon we would have no resourses to accomidate us all.

 

I agree with disease etc keeping the population in check, but I disagree with your theory that we would outgrow our resources. i did a project on this a few months ago and with technology being at the stage it is now, resources are virtually the one thing we don't need to worry about as much. Like I said though I agree that disease etc is a way to help keep the population in check and should not be messed with through genetics. :D