Genetic Engineering Ethics

Listening for the Public Voice, by Robert Cook-Deegan and Jane Maienschein, discusses the issue of genetic engineering and the ethical dilemma and how the United States, government, and people are interacting in the struggle of the ethics behind genetic engineering. The authors present the facts that genetic engineering has laid in the grey area forever, and still continues to sit in that grey area. Genetic Engineering will occasionally find itself in the news and the argument reignites but falls flat within a couple of weeks waiting till the next breakthrough arises. Cook-Deegan and Maienschein stats some of the most recent progress in genetic engineering, which brings into perspective the relevance, development, and the possibility that soon …show more content…
Cook-Deegan and Maienschein abstain from arguing for or against genetic engineering rather the argument lies in the fact that the public should decide actively instead of passively. Cook-Deegan and Maeinschein’s introduction does a good job of putting into context how far genetic engineering has progressed, but the shift from the recent advancements of genetic engineering to history of the genetic engineering is abrupt. The beginning of the paper leads a different way than where the paper's purpose is. Cook-Deegan and Maienschein main function of this paper is to make apparent to the public that they are currently deciding passively which is never a good way to decide. Cook-Deegan and Maienschein are discussing much more than just genetic engineering. The paper discusses how controversial science seems to advance even with a large opposition without a care for this opposition, and eventually the public loses their momentum to fight the advancement and science wins. This is what passive decision is to Cook-Deegan and Maienschein. People will only fight the scientific progression when it is put into the media, but the science will slowly …show more content…
Near the end of the paper these questions appear which cause the reader to question what is going on and think about the issues that Deegan-Cook and Maienshein are presenting. For example Deegan-Cook and Maienshein use this rhetorical question, “Is there a problem here?” to make the reader think about the ethical implications of genetic engineering (Deegan-Cook, Maienshein, 1). Although this is not the main argument it makes the reader form opinions about genetic engineering and that eventually makes Cook-Deegan and Maienshein’s argument more powerful. Once the authors makes the reader form a judgement Cook-Deegan and Maienshein state their main argument which is that people should actively decide. This is effective because once the reader has an viewpoint it is more likely that the reader will want to actively decide rather than passively