Genetic Engineering Outline

Thesis: There are multiple points to support that the practice of genetic engineering helps us as a society, but there are other sides arguing that the genetic modification of humans and animals is unjust. They also say that genetically modifying foods serves no purpose for health. This practice has upsides and downsides, this causes controversy for genetic engineering.

Genetic engineering background and what it is.

Genetic engineering is the process of modifying an organism's characteristics through its genetic code. This can be carried out in people, animals, and foods.This is done mainly to rid our bodies of harmful illnesses that may prevent us from living longer, and it is also used to improve the way we grow and make foods more efficient.

Genetic engineering can help in many ways, but can lead to things considered to be harmful or unethical.

The point of genetic engineering is to modify one type of plant or animal for a certain use and then have them reproduce and spread the given trait. If this doesn't work then the modification won't be passed on, defeating the overall purpose of genetic engineering.

1. The people that perform in this branch of science are called genetic engineers.
2. These engineers work to improve biological capabilities of organisms.

Some focus on human genetic illnesses.

1. The process of genetic engineering.
2. The first step is to identify the gene that will be altered. This step requires

that the gene is found and then isolated. When this is done, the gene can either be added or removed to or from the organism.

2. The second step involves the copying of the isolated gene, several times.

This requires the DNA that was in the organism also to be copied several times. Genetic engineering can be done on any organism. This process is done by splitting the DNA in half through the double helix. The split DNA is then paired with the chemical that is appropriate.

3. The gene is then transferred into the new organism. The genes transferred

are inserted into the tissue of the organism because it is impossible to insert it into every cell.

1. This would create a new plant or animal trait, which the purpose in genetic engineering. This can be done through the modified tissue. As the new DNA is introduced, the animal or plant will now have what was changed.
2. After DNA is inserted, check if the results are what was desired.
3. Check for the modification in the offspring. If the offspring of either the plant or animal do not show the change in the genetic code, then the genetic engineering did not work. This would  result in having to repeat the process.
4. The history of genetic engineering

In 1859, Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species which gives us a look at what they knew about breeding at that time.

This book talks of two main points which help set up what we know of genetic engineering and many other points in biology. One of these points is that diverse organisms come from one or many similarly common ancestors. The second point is the process in which this evolution occurs is natural selection. Darwin is mainly referred to as the father of evolution.

Gregor Mendel developed the basic concept of genetics in 1865.

1. He discovered this through an experiment that he designed with cross breeding pea plants with different traits. His observations were seen as the stage for genetics.In 1952, the first test-tube plants were constructed.The process of genetic engineering was first put into place by Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen in 1973.
2. Herbert and Stanley successfully join a foreign piece of DNA into a plasmid (genetic structure in a cell) carrier. This then inserted genetic information into the bacterium. When this bacteria reproduced, the DNA foreign to it was copied over and was genetically modified.

In 1978, Louise Brown was born and was declared the first test tube baby. This was a great achievement for genetic modification in humans.

In 1980, the first genetically modified mouse was developed.

In 1983, the first transgenic plant was introduced to the world in the form of tobacco.

In 1987, the United States had its first field test with genetically modified crops such as tomatoes and tobacco.

In 1990, the United States FDA approved the first food that was genetically modified.

In 1991, genetic therapy on humans was tried and tested.

In 1994, the first transgenic food was released on the market in the form of tomatoes.

In 1997, the first cloned animal, Dolly the sheep, was developed.

1. Dolly was developed in a series of experiments that were trying to find a better way to produce livestock that were genetically modified.

In 2001, the first genetically modified human babies were born. The world's first human clone was also introduced by Advanced Cell Technology, USA.

III. Genetic engineering has served to make many great discoveries in the world, many them  are great such as these.The process of genetic engineering can help to fight and prevent diseases. Many diseases in the world are considered to be deadly and appear indestructible, but many of these could be treated through genetic engineering. Some of these genetic problems could be solved if these scientists intervened and programed the genetics of the person so the future generations could become resilient to the disease.

1. Some of these diseases that showed promising results with gene therapy are hemophilia, some causes of blindness, Immune deficiencies, and muscular dystrophy. But there are other diseases that are under experiments with gene therapy. One of these is cancer, B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, is the type they are testing. They are using a CAR T-cell therapy, this is can only be used with children and young adults. Overall, gene therapy is making a difference in the curing of somewhat common diseases.

Genetic engineering can cure young or even unborn children from illnesses.

1. Curing young or unborn children from diseases would allow the child to be healthy and disease free at birth and potentially for the rest of their lives. This same process can cure adults that might pass on these illnesses to their offspring, this would allow them to no longer have the illness, leading for healthier offspring and future communities. These illnesses are seen to be genetic, passes down from parent to offspring. Some of the illnesses that can be treated in unborn children can be seen in huntington's disease, sickle cell anemia, and Down's syndrome.

Genetic engineering has the potential to keep us living longer.

1. Genetic engineering can help us to increase the amount of time that we live by reducing some of the things that cause us to die such as our cells dying. This could lead to our life span increasing and quality of life improving. Genetic engineering helps us to adapt to changes in the environment faster.
2. Genetic engineering can help us humans to adapt to changes in our ever changing environment. This can be best seen through global warming. This process can help us to adapt more efficiently and faster compared to regular evolution.Genetic engineering has the potential to produce more efficient foods.
3. Foods affected by genetic engineering can be more able to survive harsh temperatures as in being to hot or cold. They would still contain the same nutrients needed to survive.Genetic engineering can produce foods with a better healing values.
4. The future predicts that soon we'll be able to produce genetically engineered foods that can serve as edible vaccines.Genetic engineering can improve the growth rate of plants and animals.
5. Genetic engineering can allow for a faster paced maturity, this can help in a couple ways. Any added genes might require it, and it would allow produce to grow faster: increasing the economy and we'd never run out of available produce.Genetic engineering can help animals or plants produce more.
6. Through this process, plants would be able to increase the amount they can grow per plant and animals such as cows might be able to produce more milk. This would increase farmer's pay, it would also be used for more food, and it could also help other processes to grow or create more things faster.
7. Genetic engineering is seen as something that has helped make many discoveries and help us, but it does have down sides.Genetic engineering in considered wrong in the eyes of many.Many religious groups are relating genetic engineering to playing god because you are removing diseases and defects that exist in the world for a reason. They believe that if all of these are removed, then the Earth's population would become too large and cause even more problems possibly unpredictable.

Genetic engineering could lead to genetic defects farther down the line.

1. As scientists try to solve a problem at the cellular level with genetic modification, they could cause something even worse. As scientists know a lot of our bodies' functions, they don't know everything. These fixes they could be making could cause something more dangerous they haven't discovered yet.

The nutritional value of foods can be less.

1. As genetic engineering can increase the rate of growth in organisms, it can cause the nutritional value to be decreased do to growing too fast.Genetically modifying livestock or plants might lead to negative effects.
2. If genetic engineering were to make a plant more resilient to a drought or a cow able to produce more milk, it could lead to bad effects. If the plant becomes able to resist a drought, it could also make the plant weak to something such as sunlight. If the cow can produce more milk, it could cause the its life span to become shorter. Overall, changes that affect living animals and plants could cause unexpected consequences.

Genetic engineering could cause genetic diversity to become a problem.

1. Genetic engineering can produce artificial types of animals or plants to help produce more of what they have or for them to live longer, but what happens if they get out. An animal or plant that gets out could interact with another unmodified animal of the same species and create more of the modified species. This could cause the original to fade away and only have the modified exist. This could create possible problems in the environment.

The knowledge of genetic engineering could become abused.

1. Genetic engineering is used to treat humans for bad disorders that may

harm them, it is used to improve the quality of life. This practice can be overused, genetic engineering can modify humans in the way that we are modifying plants and animals through things like growth. If we performed these things on humans we'd be abusing the technology to do something unethical to the eyes of many. One of these possible examples could be seen through designer babies which is the process of genetically modifying children for non medical reasons, but instead parent preference. They could choose to increase their child's height, strength, intelligence, etc.

1. Conclusion

Genetic engineering truly shows benefits for our society allowing us to live better and longer.Genetic engineering has many helpful reasons in why we as a society do it. Gene engineering can help us lead better lives without diseases, we can live longer, and we can produce more foods at a faster growth rate with more helpful effects, expanding our economy.

1. Genetic engineering truly shows the goods it can do, but it can also form many bad things from it.

Genetic engineering can add many good things to the body, but some of those things can considered bad. We could create something we've never seen before (possibly creating something worse), we could lower nutritional value in foods, lower genetic diversity if the modified specimen escapes into the wild, and if this technology gets abused many things that we call unethical could be done.

1. My opinion on the matter.

I truly believe that genetic engineering has its place in our society to create good things, but with all of the negative effects and them possibly getting out of hand I have to disagree with the practice. I believe that if this gets into the wrong hands or we create something we didn't mean to create, it could cause many worse outcomes. I feel that genetic engineering is good and should stay for the use of getting rid of diseases such as muscular dystrophy and types of cancers. I don't think that genetic engineering is necessary for modifying foods or what they do, this to me can cause problems. Even with the good part of it being the prevention and getting rid of diseases, I still won't always agree do to the possible risks we might not know of. I don't disagree with the initial practice, I just don't trust that the outcomes will always be what we want them to be. To me, I feel it just makes the practice unnecessary.

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