Genetic Engineering: Its All Fun And Games Until S

Essay by EssaySwap ContributorHigh School, 12th grade February 2008

download word file, 3 pages 3.0

Genetic Engineering: It's All Fun and Games Until Someone Gets Cloned As the clock slowly ticks away to the year 2000, technology is racing at the speed of light. Within the last 25 years, technology has exploded to become like an octopus with its tentacles spread into many different fields of study. We have long since fantasized about the future, with all the possibilities it will bring; and while we tend to only think about the positive aspects, technology does offer potential for disaster.

In 1996, with the cloning of a Scottish sheep, the idea of the impossible task of successful genetic manipulation was erased, and the world was faced with the likelihood that some day humans would also be cloned. It is expected that within the next ten years, the scientists working on the Human Genome Project, will have completed the task of mapping out the hundreds of thousands of gene sequences that form our DNA.

Thus providing the information needed to design the ultimate human: a person resistant to all known diseases in combination with a great mind and elite athletic skills. With the speed at which all of this is happening, is anyone stopping to think what some of the consequences might be? Recently, the population of the Earth reached six billion. Six billion, normal, regular non-genetically altered people, people who are susceptible to disease and infection. Now imagine how much the population would increase to with the intervention of the superhuman. Hundreds of thousands of people would not be dying of heart disease, or cancer, or AIDS. The population would continue to increase until the Earth's natural resources were depleted. No more rain forests, no more fresh water, no more food. By genetically engineering organisms, we are throwing off the balance of an already unsteady...