A DISCUSSION ON GENETIC ENGINEERING

Genetic engineering is a new and emerging field in science, becoming more important and popular every day. With its roots firmly in biology, this field is modern and requires advanced technology. If you don’t know, genetic engineering is the professional modification of specific genes in a living organism’s body. It is imperative today because of the opportunities it offers.
If you successfully identify and modify a specific part of a person’s DNA, we can prevent many hereditary (inherited from family) diseases. We have observed that if we change a pregnant woman’s genes, the modification will also be passed on to the child. This way, with one modification, we can prevent a whole family from developing these diseases. Also, there is an even bigger and harmful problem we can solve – cancer. We all know that cancer isn’t just a simple disease but a very complex problem seen in many individuals. Here is the surprising part: Cancer is actually the de-modification of some genes in our body. What do I mean by that? Well, sometimes our body might produce cells with a different gene sequence. This very slight difference can cause the cell to reproduce rapidly and become aggressive toward the surrounding cells. This leads to an extremely fast buildup of these cells in a specific organ in our body, and we simply call this cancer. Why did I tell you all this? Now that you understand how cancer is related to genetic engineering, it is very hard to battle with cancer. The main treatment is chemotherapy, but it has many harmful effects on the patient. But imagine, when cancer is detected on someone’s body, we can easily prevent it from spreading by restoring the gene to its original form. This is one of the main reasons genetic engineering is supported, being a huge advantage.
There is also another usage and advantage of genetic engineering; this one is more absurd and closer to sci-fi than science: using genetic engineering on other organisms. Mainly animals and plants for a distinct purpose: To modify the genes to change animals’ appearance and traits or bring back extinct species. Although this won’t directly affect our lives, we can work our way towards a future where we can control the destiny of life and be an even more modern civilization. Also, we have done this successfully in recent years. Of course, we don’t get a live animal and modify every single cell in its body; instead, we modify the organism’s DNA in its egg or when it’s not even born. This makes the process way easier and faster.
Genetic engineering is a very complex field, requiring years of education and dedication to complete a single project. First, engineers gather a lot of information, run programs and simulations, and develop specific tools and nanorobots because they need to operate at microscopic scales to reach cells and more. Many genetic engineers work in sterilized labs to understand how the special vaccines they produce work, which makes their work extremely challenging.
So, we have talked about genetic engineering, explained how it works and some of its advantages, but now we have to explain its significant disadvantage. First, their job is so complex that it is extremely expensive. In fact, only a few known genetic engineering companies exist because they require substantial investment or funding to keep the business alive. Unfortunately, because of the lack of technology, 99% of their projects fail, so they cannot make enough profit. Second, in a more philosophical and religious view, genetic engineering involves humans fundamentally altering the perfect nature around them. I don’t find it wrong to think “Why do we always want to change something?”. Although we can do good things, we can make matters much worse with just one experiment going wrong. One wrong gene modification can trigger rapid reproduction, followed by rapid chaos, and modified genes are extremely hard to reverse.
To sum up, genetic modification is a very complex field of science. We can use it to cure cancer or bring back extinct species, but one mistake could make everything worse. It has many advantages but also many disadvantages. This means we should be cautious about what we do, or we can ruin the world. Use science for our sake, or make science destroy our world.