The Debate Over Genetic Engineering - 1772 Words

Over the past few decades genetic engineering has caused plenty of controversy not only in politics, but as well as in science and the lives of everyday people. Controversy is not new to this subject, in fact it has a rich history of it, from cloning to patenting several types of DNA. Some scientist in this field even oppose this subject. While there are many cons in this subject such as people taking advantage over the technology, there are also a lot of pros that come out of it and has helped society such as creating cures for diseases that are not yet curable today. This paper will not only present the pros and cons of genetic engineering, but also part of the history and the basic principles and concepts behind it. In genetic†¦show more content†¦Germ-line therapy is mostly used to cure inheritable diseases such as sickle-cell anemia and hemophilia to name a few, unfortunately this type of gene therapy is illegal in many countries. Furthermore, in somatic cell therap y they switch the â€Å"bad† gene for the â€Å"good† gene. Somatic cell therapy is not inheritable because it only effects that one patient’s other cells besides sex cells. This ultimately ends up as a safer method because it only affects the cells that are targeted. In somatic cell therapy, they use gene splicing, which is the focal point of genetic engineering. Gene splicing is where a gene is cut vertically and joined with another piece that is also cut vertically. After this is done and the new piece of DNA is formed a method called gene transfer is used to incorporate the new DNA into an organism’s cells. Somatic cell therapy is used to cure a number of disease including cancer and muscular dystrophy. â€Å"Gene therapy can simply depicted by using an analogy: all it is like taking one recipe from a cookbook and rewriting it to make it better and putting into different cookbook.† (agbiosafety.unl.edu) Indeed, genetic engineering is simply a method by which you physically extract a gene from an organism and put it into a different one, which gives that organism the power to convey that trait encoded by the gene. Genetic engineering also has a rich history, but has made its big leaps just recently. The basic breeding started in 1865 with an