IDEA OF PROGRESS (scientific breakthroughs )

IDEA OF PROGRESS

I'm going to talk about the notion of Idea of progress. First of all, I would like to give a definition of this notion. The idea of progress can be defined as an improvement, a development or a change, a technical, scientific or social advance which contributes to making the world a better place. Among the whole of the propositions offered by the notion "Idea of progress", I chose to focus scientific progress, mainly in the creation of the genetically perfect Man. Changing the human germ line, a tinkering of what constitutes our species, is a technique banned by a vast majority of world scientists. Geneticists fear that one day this method could be used to create new breeds of humans with additional traits such as physical strength or superior intelligence. That's why, we will try to explain, if scientific breakthroughs are always positive for humanity? The different documents studied here will help us to answer this question. For that, I will present four documents in two part. Firstly, we will see that scientific breakthroughs are positive for humanity. Then, it can also be negative.

The first document is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley entitled Brave New World. Published in 1932 in the form of an international scientific empire that manufactures its citizens in the laboratory on a eugenic basis. Set in a future London, the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and conditioning. The Director is leading a group on a tour the human production factory, and introduces his scientific breakthrough to the newly arrived students. He is convinced that he is serving a great cause and no one dares doubt him. Indeed, it helps improve the quality of the embryos, preventing drawbacks and ensuring the birth of healthy human beings by eradicating any possible disease. In order to approach the second document, I will define what pre-implantation genetic is. PGD is used by parents who want to make sure their child will not suffer from a severe disease, but also to select certain physical characteristics. Let's take the example of Molly Nash's story. She is a teenager who was born with a rare illness from which she was destined to die before the age of 7. She was cured in 2000 thanks to a bone marrow transplant from her brother Adam. People must have been quite appalled at Adam’s birth since he was a medicine baby whose purpose was to save his sister. It showed that such an innovative scientific breakthrough can improve life expectancy and have outstanding results when it comes to healing severe diseases.

However, the last two documents highlight negative aspects. Indeed, this mass production of human beings underline in "Brave New World" is leading to uniformity and the release of clones that are considered a product deprived of individuality. It also wipes out all identity and creates impersonal and dehumanized people who are all similar to each other. Moreover, apart from the medical objectives as in the document entitled "Molly Nash's story", PGD also serves cosmetic purposes. The title “Design your baby” of the third document shows how revolutionary this technique is because you can now choose your baby’s physical characteristics so that produce babies who are expected to conform to your wishes.

The fourth document is a cartoon which comes from a website. It

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