Ethical Issues In Genetic Engineering

Until the 1960’s, there was no real threat to the ethical foundation of humans from genetic engineering. Due to the increasingly popular experiments of cloning and modification after 1960, there was a steady increase in the risks and expectations from the new science. The leading researchers of the time wanted to continue working on the projects, but they knew if there were not guidelines in place to regulate the growing discipline, then it could be catastrophic for the welfare of everyone. In 1975, a group of 140 scientists and researchers met to discuss safety concerns and ethical considerations of the growing genetic modifications at the International Conference on Recombinant DNA Molecules in Asilomar, California( Photos from Asilomar…, n.d.). The scientists wanted to regulate what organisms could be modified. In order to do this, they implemented safety standards that allowed this research to only continue in bacteria that could not live outside the laboratory ( Photos from Asilomar…, n.d.). There was no formal ethical discussion at this meeting, but with the rules in place, most instances that could possibly violate standard ethical policies would already be avoided. The rules and discussions from the conference in Asilomar sparked the National Institutes of Health (NIH) guidelines that are in use today ( Photos from Asilomar…, n.d.). The guidelines have grown from this foundation with each new discovery, but the basic principles remain the same. …show more content…
While there are uncompromising views on both sides of the spectrum, most individuals reside in the neutral