Should We Allow Genetic Engineering of Humans? Genetic engineering is a burgeoning technology that has been surging in development and popularity within the last few years. Genetic engineering is the altercation of genes in an organism. Humans have been doing this for millennia through process of selective breeding since the dawn of agriculture. In modern times, we have made a lot of headway on the development of technologies that make the process easier. Today through the advent of new technologies, we are able to physically alter the DNA of living organisms faster, cheaper, and easier than ever. The progress that has been made has led to people advocating for use of this technology on humans. Genetic altercation of has a lot of potential
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The first potential use for genetic engineering is the treatment and elimination of disease. This works for viruses by giving the genetic information of the disease to a DNA database, called CRISPR. All viruses operate by invading the cells and imprinting genetic code in it that causes the cell to use its nutrients to create more of that virus. Once the cell dies the virus spreads to the other cells repeating the process until all the cells are dead. If or when a cell is able to survive this process, it takes a copy of the DNA the virus implanted, and then stores it in the CRISPR. This information is spread to the other cells. When the virus tries to invade a cell, a protein called cas-9 is activated and it reads the DNA looking for a match to the virus DNA it has in store. Once it finds a match, it targets that section of the DNA and cuts the virus replicating DNA out of the cell.
The potential this has to cure human diseases is enormous. While the technique is still in its infancy it is already beginning to show a lot of promise. When this method was tested to treat rats infected with the HIV virus, just a single injection of CRISPR in to the rats tails was able to remove over 50% of the virus from the rats cells. It is possible that in a few decades that HIV and other viruses could be eliminated. There is also the possibility of curing cancer this way. By genetically engineering peoples cells, we can make their immune systems better and detecting and eliminating the cancer
The first potential use for genetic engineering is the treatment and elimination of disease. This works for viruses by giving the genetic information of the disease to a DNA database, called CRISPR. All viruses operate by invading the cells and imprinting genetic code in it that causes the cell to use its nutrients to create more of that virus. Once the cell dies the virus spreads to the other cells repeating the process until all the cells are dead. If or when a cell is able to survive this process, it takes a copy of the DNA the virus implanted, and then stores it in the CRISPR. This information is spread to the other cells. When the virus tries to invade a cell, a protein called cas-9 is activated and it reads the DNA looking for a match to the virus DNA it has in store. Once it finds a match, it targets that section of the DNA and cuts the virus replicating DNA out of the cell.
The potential this has to cure human diseases is enormous. While the technique is still in its infancy it is already beginning to show a lot of promise. When this method was tested to treat rats infected with the HIV virus, just a single injection of CRISPR in to the rats tails was able to remove over 50% of the virus from the rats cells. It is possible that in a few decades that HIV and other viruses could be eliminated. There is also the possibility of curing cancer this way. By genetically engineering peoples cells, we can make their immune systems better and detecting and eliminating the cancer