Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Gen Control

The topic is trivial and complicated. Lots of scientists around the world support Gen Control because its many advantages have already been proved. However, there are many others who are really worried about the bussines that is built behind this scientific practise.
Gen control has provoke a great deal of debate, in the centre of which we can find issues such as the controversial ethic side of manipulating genes and the lack of laws that control it. The ones who are already taking advantage of genetic engineering, support it under the belief which presents it as a beneficial practise that allows the prevention of posible future diseases. Private laboratories refer then to genetc prevention as a kind of service that they can offer to the community. They argue that most diseases like Diabetes, Alzheimer and Parkinson have a genetic component which can be detected in the DNA contained inside a human cell. For them, parents have the chance to use gentic methods of prevention, which will remove the cells affected with those components, and in this way, guarantee that they will have a healthy child.
To worry abaout your children's future, is reasonable. But there are times in which this line is transpassed, and superficial issues start to appear as good reasons for some parents to let ambicious and non-ethic scientists manipulate their babies' genes. The genetic code not only controls how each living thing will develope. This units of our body are also responsable for the physical characteristics that a future being will have. In the developmnet of the study of how different characteristics are passed from each generation of living things to the next, Genetics has found the way to control the units inside the cells which are responsable for the particular qualities that we inherint from our parents. For example, a genetist is capable of modifying the genes that code for the colour of a baby's eyes and chose the option that answers the petition of the child's parents. And is precisely this kind of genetic practise which is developing into an anti-moral sort of bussines in which scientists play God and children are born with having been first ask to be as their parents asked.
To imaging parents doing so has nothing to do with the prevention of diseases and the posibility of improving our children future quality of life. These are two extremes which make Gen control such a burning issue. From conservative parts of societies and religious groups up to governmets and Human Rights organazations , the debate appears among everybody and almost everywhere. Moral and ethic issues are believed to be enemies for those scientists. And how much Gen Control will develop depends not only on society approval but also on the professional ambicions of those gentists who do not fear to take risk and are willing to go beyond whatever is expected from them.

No comments: