Genetic Engineering Cons

Genetic engineering is known for it 's potential of saving lives in situations doctors have no control over and with recent developments in has made its way toward saving children before birth. It also allows people a cost effective way to be able to help increase a child 's circumstances at birth while they are still an embryo but at what cost. Just like any new technological breakthrough there are people who are taking advantage of this new technology that should require the government to limit its potential uses and implications. For those who don’t know what genetic engineering is and how it works here is some background information. There are several forms of genetic testing and we will focus on two, molecular and chromosomal genetic …show more content…
Gregory Pence, in Who’s Afraid of Human Cloning?, talks about the ability for couples to be able to have children with their own DNA even though they are known carriers of genetic diseases.He uses Sarah and Abe Shapiro, a Jewish couple and known carriers of Tay-Sachs, as an example of being able to have their own healthy child. “Knowing their risk, Sarah and Abe used in vitro fertilization . . . Such was the way Michael was created” (Pence 60). Tay-Sachs is a common genetic disorder within the Jewish people affecting one out of twenty-seven Jews in America and in addition terminal not making it possible for children to live past the age of two yet even so two known carriers they were able to have a child safely due to new embryonic technology. Through genetic engineering Sarah and Abe were able to guarantee that their child would be able to make it into adulthood and not be a carrier of Tay-Sachs disease. Genetic engineering allows people to have children who normally can’t have children and provides them with happiness with the possibility of having a …show more content…
In addition, we are already seeing disabled people being discriminated by the public and health centers and the ability to abort or chose embryos with disabilities that can be treated and don’t stop people from living a normal will lead toward the discrimination for people with disabilities that didn’t get that ability due to the common practice of aborting every “disabled” child while still in development. The government needs to step in and start limiting and enforcing its laws such as sex-selection abortion in order to combat gender discrimination and other issues that genetic modification has caused among