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Genetic Engineering: Ethical Reflections

Gillian Myers reflects on genetic engineering and its current and potential future applications. While genetic engineering has benefited crop production, meat production, and medicine, expanding human testing beyond treatment of genetic diseases could be problematic. Specifically, modifying common human genes for traits like intelligence and appearance raises ethical concerns and could hurt humanity, as depicted in many science fiction stories. However, using CRISPR to modify genetic diseases in embryos is a promising area for future research.

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97 views1 page

Genetic Engineering: Ethical Reflections

Gillian Myers reflects on genetic engineering and its current and potential future applications. While genetic engineering has benefited crop production, meat production, and medicine, expanding human testing beyond treatment of genetic diseases could be problematic. Specifically, modifying common human genes for traits like intelligence and appearance raises ethical concerns and could hurt humanity, as depicted in many science fiction stories. However, using CRISPR to modify genetic diseases in embryos is a promising area for future research.

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Gillian Myers

STEMinar

February 22nd, 2021

Genetic Engineering Reflection

Genetic engineering has been very crucial and instrumental in modern science. We rely on it for our
crop, meat production, and medicine. Even so, researchers want to expand and go beyond plant and
animal testing, to human testing. That can be justified for certain treatments of genetic diseases caused
by mutations such as cancer, better treatment, and preventative medicine. While this is the epitome of
science, some researchers want to modify our common human genes, like our looks and intelligence.
This is a highly debated topic, one of which I do not think is a good idea. From the vast array of
postapocalyptic sci-fi movies that are from human modification of looks and intelligence I have seen,
this seems like a terrible idea that would only hurt humanity. I am surprised that people consider this to
be acceptable as some testing for this has already begun. What I do think is a good idea is modification
of genetic diseases that could occur in embryos using CRISPR, like in the video. The use of CRISPR is
something I would like to see in our future research.

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