The turn of the century has ushered in many great inventions that have changed humanities lives for the better. Technologies such as virtual reality, smart phones and driverless cars. One of these up and coming technologies is genetic engineering. Genetic engineering, even though gaining traction now, really started in the early 1970s, where bacterium was created as the first genetically modified organism. (yourgenome, n.d.) About 40 years later, we have reached a turning point and have to decide if we will continue down the path of genetic engineering or turn away from it completely.
Genetic engineering is a branch of science that, directly manipulates genetic material in order to edit and change the passed down traits of a cell, organism
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One of these exciting prospects of genetic engineering is the eradication of all genetic diseases (The Tech Museum of Innovation, 2011). Diseases such as Cystic Fibrosis, Familial Hypercholesterolemia and Haemophilia could all be cured by fixing a broken gene to stop them from being passed on (Friedman, 2015). This of course would not have a 100% success rate, but so many lives could be saved by editing broken genes (futurehumanevolution, 2017). However, some critics argue that the embryo should not be altered because the results may be unexpected and unstable. In addition, when curing a disease, people can be expected to also alter other physical features, such as gender (The Tech Museum of Innovation, 2011). People fear that this could bring about a gender imbalance. Although, with the potential of curing many diseases and saving many lives, these instabilities should be tolerated, as overtime these occurrences will diminish as technology increases and even though the instabilities may cause problems for the individual they will at least be given the chance to live their life. This life saving technology should continue to be developed to give people a chance at