Biotechnology has been progressing at a blazingly fast rate since the 1700s, when the first anesthetics were developed. Since then, many technologies have sprung from the void, which have assisted countless doctors around the globe diagnose and treat patients in a safer and more effective manner. An extremely promising division of the field has come in the form of genetic testing, which has applications other than medicine, such as forensics and security. Though genetic technology holds great potential for the future of biomedicine, like any technology, it arrives with its drawbacks, which must be extracted and corrected from its pure form.
A primary ethical issue of genetic testing could come in the form of genetic discrimination. The human
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Many also feel that patenting genes is unreasonable, as these patents can cause patients to seek extremely high priced, market dominating medications which are produced by the patent holder. A solution to the current problems in genetic technology may include a ban on patenting genes. When relating to the problems in the ethics of genetic technology, a viable solution may be to have research done in contained laboratories, with no patient genes being left behind. Also, genetic lookup should not occur without a patient consent. To allow patients to feel confident in using genetic technology without worrying about identity theft, all doctors using genetic technologies must be certified by the government before practicing on patients. Since genetic technology has not arrived at the point where genes can specify a single disease, doctors, whenever possible, should back up their choices of treatment to a particular disease. This will cause less inaccuracies that could surface due to genetic testing. It can be deducted that if these guidelines are followed, a better future lies ahead of the field of