Genetic Engineering

Introduction

Genetic engineering is no doubt the one of the most popular gossipy topic in the area of science and technology in the recent years. The reason for this is that it has a significant impact towards the human and it can be so called revolution of new life. Genetic engineering will be essential and beneficial towards all living organisms in the future years. Genetic engineering offers many solutions to individual and social needs but the disadvantages definitely don't outweigh the advantages. It seems that all the discoveries done under high risks by our courageous scientists weren't appreciated by others. People against genetic engineering believe that it is unethical, wrong to play god and far too risky with the skill and knowledge we have now. For the future and advancing of our humans, our pioneer scientist must be supported to breakthrough the obstacles.

The benefits of human genetic engineering can be found in the headlines nearly every day. With the successful cloning of mammals and the completion of the Human Genome Project, scientists all over the world are aggressively researching the many different facets of human genetic engineering. These continuing breakthroughs have allowed science to more deeply understand DNA and its role in medicine, pharmacology, reproductive technology, and countless other fields.

Background

Genetic engineering has been responsible for the medical breakthrough that we all witnessed in our history such as inventing of the penicillin by Howard Florey. Another example is that mosquitoes can be modified into transgenic mosquitoes which don't carry diseases by inserting a transposable element such as hermes into a fertilized egg. Mosquitoes are responsible for spreading major human diseases, such as Malaria, Yellow Fever, Trypanosomiasis and Dengue. Malaria alone causes some 1.5 million to 2.7 million deaths annually and Yellow Fever also recorded 30 thousand deaths each year. These sterile mosquitoes are released into the nature and next the generation of mosquitoes will automatically be cured. As the generations progresses on the number of contaminated flies will decrease to a tiny percentage. This is what genetic engineering is capable of doing. ( reference- scientific American, December 1998, David A. O'Brochta and Peter W. Atkinson.)

Recently genetic engineering has been used to modify crops to alter their resistance to herbicide, drought, to improve nutritional content and faster producing rate. Genetic engineering is believed to have the power to safe the hungry people who suffer poverty in the 3rd world countries. The population on earth is growing vastly and soon or later we have to face the problem of food supply. It would be a challenge to produce adequate amount of food to feed the population of the world without the aid of genetic engineering as the world population is predicted to double within the next 50 years. In some impoverished countries the people rely on single crop such as rice as their only diet. Rice provides insufficient amount of nutrient causing malnutrition, however genetic engineering could solve the problem by modifying the rice to contain all the nutrients required by the ...