Genome Editing - Morality and Ethics
The Genome Editing is the biological equivalent of setting a Colony on Mars. The humanity is swiftly moving towards these two ambitious goals. The obvious fact is both are possible. In the case of setting up colonies on Mars there is no moral and ethics involved in it. But genome editing is altogether a different ball game.
Let us look at the possibilities in the near future. With the advanced level testing is happening using CRISPR (pronounced CRISPER and it denotes “Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats), opens the floodgates of immense possibilities for the humans to do bit of God’s work. Yes, we can get rid of disastrous diseases like Cancer, Alzheimer and Autism etc. At the same time, it also throws open the dangers like somebody creating ‘cloned photocopies’ of themselves. It’s legally banned in all countries, but scientifically there are no limitations. On the other hand, people are curious to know about creating designer babies. This was predicted by the authors like Alvin Toffler in his world-altering ‘Future Shock’ in the 70s.
Now, it’s very much possible to design somebody’s skin colour, height, structure of their nose and babies with high level of IQ etc., We can also able to alter our gene to avoid certain ‘hereditary diseases’ etc. The Lab experiments of CRISPR clearly show the possibilities of ‘editing our DNA.’ The experts say, the clinical trial will happen in less than 10-years. Within a decade and a half, we can expect lots of ‘Gene Therapy’ clinics all across the globe providing services based these advanced genetic engineering technology. Now, the moral and ethical questions remain, how far we can go and where we have to stop and how?
To understand this topic well, I have given a wonderful TED Talks.
I also attached renowned ‘The Economist” magazine article link “Editing Humanity”
By
Srini
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COYOTE (call off your old tired ethics)
Don't behave like a fool. And Ethics is not owned by one or two, it's a collective characteristics trait of Homo Sapiens !
Very interesting what going on! Good and bad - there's only a little distance between!