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Essay by seanprag October 2014

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Addressing Ethical Concerns of Biotechnology

BACKGROUND

Technology in the world today has advanced at increasingly drastic rates in the past few decades. This increase in scientific research has brought humanity to the point where we are looking closely at how human beings function, and how we can provide better cures or change things about the human race. Unfortunately, in doing this, we are at a point where it could be a violation of human rights to continue research. Many experiments that scientists want to do today could possibly harm or kill humans, so human rights activists are working to stop research and make scientists consider the ethical implications of their advancements, should they be successful.

There are already many cases where the alterations scientists can make are changing society radically. An example of this is designer babies. Doctors want to be able to change the genetic code of an embryo in its first few days to try to give the child the most favorable genetic code possible.

This is not completely possible scientifically right now, but there is a chance that this will be possible soon. If parents are able to choose the genes that the child has, human are, in essence, "playing God" and taking all the mystery out of childbirth. Many religions, such as Christianity and Judaism, do not believe that humans should have this power, and they want to stop this research immediately. For example, in Israel, a largely religious nation, the people are against this form of biotechnology and wish to stop it. There is, however, another side to the story. In the UK, they believe that with this technology in place, genetic diseases that are usually incurable could not exist anymore. Doctors would be able to choose the genes and eliminate any chance for genetic...