March 31, 2011 - Genetic Engineering - Dan Krill's BLOG on BinaryBedlam

Bio-Engineering
March 30, 2011 11:58 PM

I just watched the TED video on biological engineering linked to me by my friend, Andrew, and I had a few things to say about it. Well first off here is the clip:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovV7v2XYJAI

Now I've seen a lot of these images and articles before, but never this particular speech, very informative and well presented. He covered so many different areas of genetic modification that it's actually quite difficult to form one encompassing opinion. But I'd say overall I'm not completely against it, as a scientist I'd have to say that I encourage and applaud the continuing efforts to understand how life works down to each individual gene. But from an ethics point of view, I don't think we as a society have the moral judgment to use this knowledge responsibly. I just know that things will eventually become money driven, loose sight of the original intent, and spin out of control. I mean killer bees were created by man too, think about that!
So I think it's wrong to make these sorts of creatures and conduct this sort of research if its for making money or for our entertainment. Therefore I don't agree with custom designing human babies and especially not pets because it's not beneficial to the whole human race. It's disrespectful to other forms of life and a gross misuse of great intellect and resources. I do, however, agree with this research if it's used for something that contributes to human development, like the creation of disease fighting cures and mind-operated prostheses. And they can't be sold, they must be given away for free, otherwise something with good intent would fall victim to capitalism and eventually become another commodity produced by the lowest bidder in unfavorable conditions making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Life and genetics belong to us all, no one should hold copy rights to something developed from something that's been around for millions of years. Don't even get me started on Monsanto's seed copy rights, god that pisses me off. But like the guy who developed the cure for polio, he is one of my personal heroes. When he created it, he made sure to give the formula to the world right away, he had no intent to sell it to a pharmaceutical company.
It's probably already to late though. Our technological development in this field is growing faster than our sense of moral direction.

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