After attending the genetic engineering talk, I was thoroughly surprised by the kinds of topics that are currently being worked on! Going into the talk, I did not know much about genetic engineering besides genetically modified foods. However, at the talk, we discussed using animals to grow baby organs and the three parent baby (using mitochondrial DNA). I think it is definitely interesting to think about the ethical implications of these topics and how people would react if, for instance, baby organs were actually frequently grown in animals and what it would be like if this was the norm. It’s hard to wrap my head around how much science has advanced in what seems like such a short period of time! I certainly don’t know how I feel about a three parent baby – on one hand, it is crazy that the baby has DNA from three different people and this is a huge advancement in science. On the other hand, does this have negative effects, whether it be biological, social, etc., on the baby as s/he grows up (or does it have an impact at all)? Ultimately, this talk really made me think about where I draw the line for when genetic engineering has gone too far. In some people’s minds, this line may not exist whereas in other people’s minds, we may have already crossed it. I’m not too sure where I stand.
Rose Scholars Fall 2018
Endless possibilities
I like how you mentioned the ethical impacts of this research, and how there is still a lot that we don’t know about the future. This made me think about genetically modified organisms in our food, and how we still don’t really have a lot of long term data to determine if they present a risk to our health. It is the difficulty in obtaining long term data and humanity’s rush for progress that both seem to be fighting for dominance in the scientific community.
I agree with both your comment and the post as a whole. It is interesting (and scary) to me how our knowledge of how to do something, in a sense, exceeds our knowledge of what we are doing. This is an issue that has dogged science since at least the turn of the century, and will likely be with us for the foreseeable future, unfortunately.
While I could not attend this event, we have touched on some topics in some of my classes. It is a wildly interesting topic, and it can have beneficial impacts on humans. However, I agree that it opens a lot of ethical questions. Even as a student of science, it can be hard to know where to draw the line. I agree it gives us a lot to think about, and it may never be clear where the line should be drawn. I think everyone draws that line in a different place, which makes it hard to tell what is right and wrong when it comes to genetic engineering.