Question

Is Genetic Engineering of humans a good thing or a bad thing?

Answer 1

Ans.

• Genetic engineering involves direct manipulation of an organism's genes such as plants, humans or bacteria.
• There are a myriad of techniques available for such genetic manipulations with the CRISPR-CAs9 being one of the latest technique.
• Ever since the begining of agriculture era, humans have been playing with the genetics of domestic animals through breeding.
• However, this breeding was done through the method of selective breeding which is slow and produce less precise results.
• Nowadays, a gene from a given organism can be excised and selectively insert into the genome of another organism.
• We can even delete, modify or mutate a given gene or DNA sequence as per our wish in current scenarios.
• All these modern techniques of gene modification are more precise and swift.
• For humanity, genetic engineering has been largely beneficial till now since there are much examples of beneficial use of it then the bad use.
• Gene engineering has enabled us to deeply study and understand the structure and functions of many cell types as well as organs.
• Greater understanding of these all basic structure and processes helped us to understand more clearly about the causes of human diseases and pathologies.
• Nowadays, there are improved opportunities to cure a diseases or to improve health through the help of knowledge obtained through gene engineering technique.
• As an example, using mouse tumor model, now we have greater knowledge about the initiation and spread of tumor.
• So, by testing drugs on these genetically modified animal models, growth or spread of tumors can be stopped.
• Likewise, from other genetically engineered animal models, such as fruitfly, we have accumulated a great wealth of information about many other diseases.
• Several important GMO plants have also been created with the help of genetic engineering.
• Now a days, many portion of a population which previously faced hunger, can now be feed through these GMO foods, thus providing an opportunity to eradicate the hunger from the world.
• However, as no technique is completely safe, so there are some concerns associated with gene engineering as well such as;

1. Unethical disturbing of the natural gene pool of an organism without any consent.
2. Curing a disease may not be so simple especially when simultaniously many genes are disturbed in a disease.
3. No knowledge about the long term effect of these modifications.
4. Uncontrolled use of this technique may reduce the genetic diversity.

• Genetic engineering is an area of very high potential and much interest nowadays.
• There should be continuous efforts made to improve it's products and introduce new tools of genetic modification.
• Even though there are many concerns with this technique, but it's advantages outweigh those risks and deemed to be much beneficial for most of the populations.