Assignment 16: Joshua Pe

Speech Genetic Engineering

A secret experiment about 40, 50 years ago attempted to produce a perfect child from the donated sperm of six different fathers. Surprisingly, the embryo split into two, creating twins. One was perfection, handsome, tall, athletic, intelligent—while the other, not so much, unfortunately being squat, ugly, and balding. They’re separated at birth with no knowledge of each other or of their mom; the genetic trash is sent to live at an orphanage, while the perfect child is sent to live with a leader of the experiment. This is of course, fictitious. It’s the set up for the movie Twins, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Devito. But it was a product of booming interest in genetic engineering. 8 years after the premier of the movie, in 1996, the cloned sheep Dolly was born. Dolly was one of the first successes in cloning, but in 2016, 20 years after she was born, cloning remains limited. Science has advanced in other ways—scientists have the ability to genetically modify plants and animals, genetically modified organisms, or GMOs as they are commonly referred to. And GMOs have struck controversy. People have fought against companies such as Monsanto, who has developed crops, as to who owns the rights of the GMOs. But it’s not just with crops; people fight over the ownership of human DNA. Through years of collaboration and work, scientists decoded the human genome to advance knowledge of the human body and medicine, and companies have branched from that project to explore more. Now people have gone to court to decide who owns the genes that they volunteered.  Still, scientists have trudged further into the future. Recently, in 2015, Chinese scientists used CRISPR, a gene-editing tool, to edit the DNA of nonviable human embryos to try to reverse a gene that causes a fatal blood disorder, and they were unsuccessful, but they sparked an ethical debate. In that same year, scientists announced that they would attempt to bring the long extinct wooly mammoth back to life with the same technology, by transplanting mammoth DNA into an elephant. Much of the public has excitement over this proposition—could there be a real life Jurassic Park? And there’s much more to the possibilities in the advancement of cloning and genetic modification. Could companies clone humans to harvest them for their organs? Never Let Me Go, a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro explores the lives of three people born for the purpose of donating their organs. And more works have delved through the possibilities of eugenics and genetic engineering. Gattaca, a science fiction film explores the societal consequences of genetic engineering. It explores destiny and who is allowed to govern lives. So people have dreamt of the possibilities of the future of genetic modification, so to what extent should genetic engineering be allowed on humans, and who should govern it? I believe that only up to the minimal editing needed to prevent hereditary diseases ought to be allowed, and the government should regulate it, with guidance through health authorities.

To what extent? Scientists are trying to apply genetic modification to prevent hereditary diseases like the fatal blood disorder, color blindness, sickle-cell disease, hemophilia, cancer, and HIV. To do this, they take the gametes, the sperms and eggs, and alter the DNA through CRISPR to take out any faulty genes and replace them with normal genes. Now in 2015, 1.1 million people died to HIV. It was projected that 595,690 Americans, just Americans, not the whole world, would die to cancer by the end of 2016. Not to mention that even more people are diagnosed with these long term diseases that tear at their lives and their friends and families. To prevent the hereditary passing and lessen the number of those affected sounds like a good thing. Improving the quality of life of people and preventing diseases and healing them are the goals of medicine. But it can be taken further. The technology to prevent hereditary diseases has been shown in an experiment done to give life to a child with three parents. Through the usage of a “spindle nuclear transfer” Doctor Zhang helped parents conceive a child they thought they could not have due to a mitochondrial defect, which caused them to lose two older children. Not to just the application of genetic diseases and disorders, but to improvements in vanity. What if a man 5’6’’ wants his future son to be of average height, 5’10’’, or taller? What if that man also wants his son to be attractive, a straight Adonis? And what if he wants his son to be an Einstein in school and an Olympian in athletics? If this man has the funds to guarantee himself a perfect son, should he be allowed to do it? And who should decide? Should the government decide (They already have such power in the US and other countries)? The government already decides the definition of alive and dead, and prevents people from physician-assisted suicide, so they seem like the authority on life and death. But what if the government is given the power to govern the fates of our progeny, like in Gattaca? What if the government takes it to the extent of Brave New World, which I am sure everyone has read in this room. There’s a potential for a dystopian, rigid class structure filled with people genetically modified to be alphas, betas, deltas, and gammas. Should the government be able to decide if little embryo Johnny will be working in the coal mines or if fetus Tina will be living it up without a worry in the world? It’s an extreme, but it’s something to consider. What if it’s the wild west, an free for all for any company with the technology? The same issue has come up, but it would be worse. We have to bite the bullet and accept that the government is the best option. Hopefully a government that is guided through a national or international health organization. Hopefully some corrupt government or organization will not utilize this technology to create super soldiers or oppress people.

In summary, we ought to take advantage of this potential. We ought to limit ourselves to the minimal amount of gene editing needed to give future children a good start to their lives, not one condemned to battling or suffering with diseases. We ought to try to regulate this technology, and make sure that trusted authorities manage it correctly. We have the technology to play god, and we ought to be wise.

Works Cited

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Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: Perennial Classics, 1998. Print.

Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Print.

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