Biotechnology and the Modern World

Advances in biotechnology can be looked at two ways; both positive and negative. People can also differ in what would qualify as positive and negative. Some may think that tinkering with Deoxyribonucleic acid also know as DNA, should not be allowed at all for any reason. Others believe that manipulating human DNA can have many different benefitial outcomes.

Biotechnology or genetic engineering, can be be potentially misused and result in negative outcomes. Misuse can consist of manipulating or exploiting for gender selection, the creation of “designer babies” or the creation of “super babies;” two related but dissimilar potential misusses. Genetic engineering can be used to select the gender of the babythat the parent or parents may wish to have. There is technology available today that will allow a geneticist to tinker with human genetic matterial to make a deisgner baby. The designer baby could be engineered to have the gender that may be desired; and there is the possibility other special characteristicts can be selected, or “designed.” Sometime soon, the design of the baby could go as far as hair color, eye color, height and who know what the possibilities could become. As advances in technology inprove, the ability to create more and more specific changes in human beings will increase; as will the increased likelyhood of unintended outcomes. Some people may want to create a “super baby,” or a baby that has increased abilities. Super babies can be engineered to be more intellegent, stong, aggresive, impervious to pain, and have faster reflexes.

Manipulating the DNA of a baby to get the specific baby that a parent, researcher, or concerningly a government, might desire could have very negative or possably even dangerous out...

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...genetic engineering she did not have to give up having a family. “Like a growing number of couples who know a disease runs in the family, they chose in vetro fertilization, and had cells from the embryos, created in a petri dish with her eggs and his sperm, tested first for the disease-causing gene. Only embryos without the gene were implanted. The Kalinskys are now parents of three children who will be free of the fear of GSS” (Kolata). The technology was life altering for this family. Had it not been for this technology, the couple would have elected to never have children of her own.

Works Cited

Kolata, Gina. "Ethics Questions Arise as Genetic Testing of Embryos Increases." The New York Times. The New York Times, 03 Feb. 2014. Web. 06 Mar. 2014. .