Pros And Cons Of Crispr

CRISPR, like most developing biotechnologies, has been evaluated on a philosophical level and this section will work to find and organize what current philosophers and bioethicists are stating about CRISPR. By looking into the works of Baumann, Heidari, and Charo what bioethics see as major benefits to CRISPR along with the ethical issues surrounding CRISPR will be understood.
The first philosopher whose viewpoint I will itemize is that of Baumann, I will delve into her fears along with the benefits she sees with regard to CRISPR. One of the many advantages of CRISPR Baumann asserted is the ease of the technology as “several modifications can be performed simultaneously in one genome,” an ease that “opens up the possibility of treating complex

To begin, the three authors agree “CRISPR gene editing technology offers unrivalled opportunities in fighting genetic diseases and modifying genomes in human and other living organisms,” (Heidari 353). And other than the oblivious of curing genetic disorders, some other benefits that Heidari wrote about were like how CRISPR has the potential “to eliminate diseases such as malaria and yellow fever and reverse pesticide resistance traits of insects and weeds,” which would both drastically improve the way of life (Heidari 358). Similarly, other great benefits of CRISPR include how it could cure “strain-specific Ebola viruses or antibiotic-resistant bacteria,” (Heidari 355) along with allowing for the “engineering new organisms that are designed to serve environmental and ecological purposes, such as pollution-consuming bacteria and biofuels,” (Heidari 358). And while Heidari noted that considering how “CRISPR holds great promises,” and ethically there are so many benefits to the technology, there are also a couple of underlying ethical issues (Heidari 362). Heidari agreed with Baumann in the fear that the high price of CRISPR will leads to “concerns of distributive justice and potential inequalities,” (Heidari 359). Heidari also commented on the autonomy issue that Baumann denoted, as Heidari wrote CRISPR has ethical issues due to the “unprecedented

Charo and Greely also note the highly beneficial nature and life-changing nature of CRISPR as they believed that “using CRISPR to cure disease by human somatic cell genome editing would be universally applauded, to make better biofuel sources would be widely endorsed,” (Charo 11). The authors noted how CRISPR has so much power to aid humanity through “novel forms of disease prevention,” and how it is almost unethical to not develop CRISPR as it has the ability to cure diseases like malaria (Charo 12). But, Charo and Greely also realized CRISPR has many ethical risks that are associated with it like if CRISPR is “not [used] for the purposes of saving lives, preventing climate change, feeding a growing humanity, or other valuable goals,” then there are risk factors (Charo 15). Another ethical dilemma that Charo saw, is that CRISPR will “[increase] the human footprint on the world,” thus putting greater strain on the ecosystems of the Earth (Charo 15). So, for Charo and Greely, although CRISPR is a powerful new technology that can lead to an improvement in human health and abilities, there are also ethical risks like the increasing damaging to the Earth’s ecosystems or the negative misuses of