The Pros And Cons Of Human Genome Research

Human Genome Research can have negative effects, but the positives outweigh the negatives. There are a lot of benefits that can come from Human Genome Research. These benefits include medical advancements, new medical practices and cures, finding the history of a family, learning more about humans, and much more. Even with all of the great positive effects from Human Genome Research, there are possible negatives that can result. Some negatives include the possibility of genetic information being used against someone or the possibility that they could find a genetic disease in someone's genome that there is no cure for. These negatives could possibly change someone’s life forever if they decide to have their DNA sequenced. Although these effects

When Scientist looks at a genome they can find many things including diseases that may have been hidden in someone's genome. These are called recessive traits or genes. These traits are mutations in the DNA that are hidden or not shown in the carrier that can be passed down to the offspring of the carrier. These traits can include something as simple as the color of someone's eyes or hair to a genetic disease a parent did not know they had. If someone is a carrier of one trait and happens to have a child with someone else that is a carrier of the same trait,“there's a possibility of one in four, twenty five percent, of having an affected child” with that trait (00:13:26-00:13:31). If both parents happen to get genetic testing, they could find out they both have the disease or trait and predict the diseases or traits that the child may have. There may even be the possibility that the child may just be a carrier too, like in a case where a woman“[did] not have her mother’s disease, [and] her mother did not have it either” (Carmichael). This could possibly be a positive or negative effect from Human Genome Research. With the knowledge that both parents may be carrying a disease or trait they will know what they may be passing to a child. But, this may ruin the possibility of someone wanting to have a child because they know the risk of them passing an unwanted trait they have to their child.

Human Genome Research can allow doctors to explore the human genome and find new discoveries. Some of the new discoveries include new diseases and cures. The human genome is described as giving “immense new powers to treat, prevent and cure disease” (Nation Human Genome Research Institute). By researching the genome scientists can see what genes cause certain diseases and look to see how to possibly cure the diseases. Scientists have even begun look for cures to cancer. Cancers are traced to the oncogenes, or “normal cellular genes that go haywire as a result of deregulation or mutation” (Kevles and Hood 21). Cancer has been hard to cure because there are many different kinds of cancers and they constantly mutate and become resistant to the treatments. With the human genome scientists can start to stop the cancers by “repeatedly sequencing cancer genomes to track new genomic vulnerabilities that develop as the cells divide” (Nation Human Genome Research Institute). Scientists can also find new drugs that can help test the cancers so that the cancer will be less resistant to the drug. Along with the possibility of curing cancer, doctors can also stop misdiagnosis of diseases. By looking at the Genome doctors can diagnose a disease with no error. The Undiagnosed Diseases Program (UDP) reports that they have “evaluated more than 500 ‘mystery’ patients” and found a diagnosis for a “third of them”