Better Living Through Genetic Engineering essays

Better Living Through Genetic Engineering essays In today's society, we have made great strides towards living longer, healthier, and more productive lives. With current medical technology, we have stopped smallpox, eradicated polio, restored vision to the blind, and transplanted a human heart. Now it seems that we have made these great efforts towards a better life, we have to stop and ask ourselves where we are now going with human genetic engineering. Is genetic engineering moving faster than society is evolving? Are we as a human race prepared for all that is encompassed in the science of cloning? Or could our final goal be achieving immortality? Centrally, the issue of cloning has been a hot topic in the media mainly because it has become a technological as well as a medical breakthrough. The possibilities of cloning are innumerable that is if it works. But the other side of the coin is the ethics of the process. What happens when we master cloning of body parts and venture out to clone humans? Will this clone be someone who has feelings and mind and a spirit of its own? Will it have a soul? Genetic Engineering, the alteration of an organism's genetic, or hereditary, material to eliminate undesirable characteristics or to produce desirable new ones.(Brennan, 57) . Genetic engineering is used to increase plant and animal food production; to diagnose disease, improve medical treatment, and produce vaccines and other useful drugs (Brennan, 58). Cattle and pigs have first domesticated about 8000 years ago and through selective breeding have become main sources of meat for humans. Dogs and horses have also been selectively bre d for thousands of years for recreational purposes. Over the past 20 years, genetic engineering has been revolutionized by a new technique is known as recombinant DNA, or gene splicing, with which scientists can directly alter genetic material (Encarta, 03). Genes consist of the chemical deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). In recombinant DNA, the DNA of one organi...