So many new thi
ngs happening in the world. Some of them are just affecting us for a while, but some of them are innovations that may affect us forever, like genetic engineering. Genetic engineering is the deliberate modification of the characteristics of an organism by manipulating its genetic material. It is like building genetics as you want, sounds interesting! Think about that you can choose your child’s physical appearance, what color their eyes will be, how tall they will be etc. Or think about that we can get rid of features that we don’t like and add some features that we like to an organism, sounds impossible but it’s not; even it gets easier over the years! But it has some negative implications.
One of the negative implications of genetic engineering is that genetic engineering reduces genetic diversity. If we only focus on features that we need or like and try to add these genes to an organism, the other genes that we’re not focusing on may become vestigial. People’s every gene is a need for them. We need to adapt to changing environments and the genes become vestigial because not paying attention may help us to protect ourselves from a new environment in the future. Another implication is that even a small mistake while placing or removing a gene might cause a lot of problems such as ethical problems. A new gene that is placed in a human may not be compatible with ethics in society. The last implication is the disturbance of natural balance. Making differences can disturb the natural balance of organisms, especially animals. It makes it difficult to adapt to the environment and difficult adaption can obstruct some species’ sustainability.
Of course, we have some positive implications too. One of them is that we can increase the productivity of animals and plants. As I said, we can get rid of the features that we don’t like and add the features that are useful for us. If a feature of an animal or plant isn’t useful for people, genetic engineers can find where the unused genes in DNA, and cut them with CRISPR; then add a useful feature that belongs to another organism. This process helps plants’ and animals’ productivity. Another positive side is the treatment of genetic diseases. Genetic engineers can treat some diseases such as hemophilia and sickle cell anemia; and contribute to the development of some diseases such as cancer. And the other positive implication is that drug development. Genetic engineers develop new drugs or add and improve some medicines to help the treatment.
While doing these processes, genetic engineers must be very careful, a little mistake may cause really big problems, it can even stop our sustainability.