NOTION OF PROGRESS

The notion of progress is the fact of something going forward toward an advancement or an improvement version of itself, it’s like a forward or onward movement towards a destination. In other terms progress can also be an accomplishment of something that has evolved. Today I’ll be talking about The Idea of Progress, which is about the advancement in technology, science, modernization, liberty, democracy, longevity, and freedom from pollution and social organization which can produce an improvement in the human condition to have a higher quality of life expectancy and a better social life as well.

Now that we have defined progress, let’s ask ourselves, will progress always be a progress?

First of all, we’ll focus on the scientific advances that have helped people increase their lifespan, then we can focus on what happens when progress is being misused and finally we will see whether reality has caught up with fiction.

Firstly, science is known as a constant development and systematic study of the structure and behaviour of both the physical and natural form through observations and experiments. This shows that without the advancement of the knowledge that humans obtain currently about new cures and treatments, our life expectancy wouldn’t increase over the years. Secondly, science has benefited us in many ways, for example without medical discoveries like smallpox for example. Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by one of two virus, variola major and variola minor. Edward Jenner who was an English physician and scientist in the 19th century

discovered the world’s first vaccination which is called the smallpox vaccine in 1798 and in 1967, the World health organization or as they called themself the “WHO” intensified efforts to eliminate the disease.

On the other hand, there’s something called “preimplantation genetic diagnosis” and in short term, PGD, it’s a genetic screening technique using in vitro fertilization to ensure that a baby does not possess a known genetic defect of either parent. As it to be said, we can literally guess the disease before the baby is even recognized it means that we can almost guarantee a healthy child but no form of testing can guarantee the 100% accuracy and pgd is no exception. As technology advances, we are dehumanizing ourselves without realizing by using these kinds of techniques, even tho the scientific research on the human race has caused a lot of high expectations along with some uncertain feelings within the scientific community as well as the general public about the facts that couples eliminate their baby after a used for preimplantation or they undergo a PGD progress for non-medical reasons. This approach for the use of PGD is usually criticized by the general public and some scientists even refused to do so. Couples who go through this process for non-medical reasons is usually a form of eugenics, where they designs their baby to make the perfect model of genotype but this process will just wipe all identity and make it so that everyone looks the same. We can use “Odd man out” as an example, it’s a cartoon illustration showing a bunch of clone men with the ideal body: tall good looking and muscular tho they all look identical, and among these mens, we can spot a small skinny guy who’s about to be dumped in to the trash because he is not alike the other men

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