The notion of Progress : Is the genetic engineering a progress or a peril ?

EO : Progress or Peril

Introduction :

        I'm going to talk about the notion of “Progress”. First of all, I would like to give a defintion of this notion. Progress can be definied as an improvement, a devloppement or a change. Indeed, Significant advances which were considered unimaginable 70 years ago are going to be norm. Is the genetic engineering a progress or a peril ? For example do we really consider genetic manipulation to be progress? In the first part, we will talk about the progress in general.  In the second part, we will examine the advantages of the Designer Baby. In the third part, we will see the drawback of the Designer Baby.

Developpement :

        To begin with, I'll say that the progress forms part of our society and we live with it. He contributes to make our life easier. I am thinking especially about new technologies like mobile phone, computer. Indeed new technologies have helped people to get in touch throughout the world.

For instance in medicine have led to cure serious diseases, to improve the quality of life and life expectancy.

        Secondly, I will talk about the designer baby. A designer baby can refer to the use of Preimplantation genetic diagnosis to select desired qualities of a child. There are some advantages, for example the idea of being able to design a baby allows doctor to prevent children from being born with genetic defects. Indeed they can make sure that only healthy embryos are selected ensuring healthy babies, which is a positive change. We studied a newspaper article drawn from “USA Today” published in October 2010. This text is about a girl, molly, who had been saved by her brother, Adam. Indeed Molly had a rare illness and she was destined to die before the age of seven. So, her parents turned to PGD to pick out embryo implanted in Adam, which saved the life of Molly. This article shows the advantage of the scientific progress, in fact the medical benefits allow to saving life but the designers babies are disputed.

        However, There are a lot of negative aspects. I'm going to begin with this text from CHS Globe Online, published in 2010. In fact, science is advances enough to allow for more disturbing selections. Parent are now able to choose the sex of their baby, its level of intelligence and certain aesthetic factors. The consequences can be detrimental for the population. For instance, having a boy in China of India is considered more valuable than a girl which could result in a generation of men and a generation of “Clones” if certain physical aspects become popular. Secondly, we saw a cartoon entitled “the conveyor belt”, this cartoon show the mass production of clones in a factory. One of them seems different and deffective so he is rejected and thrown away. All the men seen together are dehumanized as in reality not two people are alike, we all have different features.

Conclusion :

        To conclude, progress is very important to live in better conditions but it shouldn't be used for anything and all the time otherwise it can be dangerous. We can consider genetically modified organism to be progress, thanks to the medical progress, we can save life, improve life condition and maybe in the future eradicate some genetic diseases

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