Discussion on genetic modification ^_^

Hello kawrums


I noticed that the last couple of days there's not really been any moral discussion threads that tend to be pretty popular. Guess people like to voice their opinions to strangers on war games haha

Usually I just try join into whatever conversation is there but often find myself just getting ignored unless I just say something really controversial to trigger people :lol:

This discussion is going to be one that's kinda close to my heart but everyone seems to always have strong opinions of. I hope I can shed some light on a few misconceptions and maybe change some minds. Although a lot of people tend to have their head set in stone about this subject.

Genetic modification.

Over the years I've seen a LOT of people basing their opinions of genetic modification of food and animals and humans off of whatever the media has portrayed genetic modification to be.
Unfortunately it's usually negative opinions that are reinforced through news sites and tv stations.
However, are they really all that bad?

Firstly- what actually is a genetic modification? Well quite simply put it's an alteration to the usual genetic coding of any living organism. Whether you're breeding taller dogs with other taller dogs to pass down taller genes

Or, taking the gene that causes jelly fish to be fluorescent and attaching it with genetic disorders to mice to see which mice received the gene and allows you to see the changes in mice and what potential treatments might help stop these changes to be so severe

Or just adding genes to plants to make them immune to insecticide...

You're causing genetic modification.

Now to better understand this we've got to understand what genes are. Genes are, as simply put as possible, proteins inside all the living cells of your body that let your cells make other proteins. Depending on the type of cell, different genes will be turned on and different genes will be turned off. This allows the cell to only make the proteins it needs to carry out its function.

For example you don't want your stomach lining cells to be expressing or turning on the same genes as your lung cells or you're going to have a bit of a problem.

Luckily for us, our bodies tend to be pretty good at expressing the right genes in the right cells.

However, some people are a lot less fortunate and are born without the expression of one gene... Anywhere...

We call these horrible diseases, syndromes. Any disease with the word "syndrome" in it is a genetic disease.

Now what happens when you have a syndrome is one of your genes is unable to be expressed at all.
For example, type 1 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is a genetic disorder or syndrome where your body cannot make the hormone insulin.
In case you don't know what insulin is, insulin is what lets your body turn basic sugars into storage carbohydrates inside your body.

If our bodies were unable to make insulin, we'd have to eat very carefully because if we eat too much we'd risk having too much sugar in our blood and dying.

Thankfully most people have insulin and there's a very easy way to treat it. Just grow some bacteria, genetically modify bacteria to produce human insulin, grow a lot of the bacteria and enjoy your vast quantities of insulin that you can sell to poor diabetic people that desperately need it.

Look at that, genetic modification of bacteria saves the day

Now that's all dandy, but what if instead of having to deal with being diabetic their whole life, you could just change this before they were even birthed.
That'd be great right!? Well we can. We can but we don't. In fact we don't cure any genetic diseases at all. Ever. We could. But we don't.

And why? Because the media has put fear into the public's eye's that if we allow genetic modification of foetuses to cure genetic diseases that are otherwise incurable, people might decide to alter other things about their kids like eye colour or hair colour or height or weight.

And I can definitely understand and accept that people feel that way. I don't think it would be right to change those things about people as well.

But there is a line. Why are people so scared to allow genetic modification to change genetic disorders such as diabetes? Or more serious syndromes like down's syndrome?

It wouldn't be too difficult to draw a line in the legalisation of it and the process of genetic modification of a foetus is relatively risk free. Like there is some risk but not much.

I am personally very much in favour of allowing such a legal change. Why should a person have to live their life with such a disadvantage that will vastly influence their entire life when there are simple solutions? It's just cruelty.

I can also understand that to many people this is messing with god's creations and medalling with how god created the world is an abomination. However, I propose it be a choice.

If the mother agrees to the genetic modification of the child to prevent a genetic disorder, it will be cured. Means not everyone has to do it. If people that agree with it want it they can and if people that don't agree with it don't then they don't have to either.

I would like to hear other people's thoughts and opinions because it is an important issue. Why treat for a disease their whole life that will negatively affect them their whole life when you can cure it with a simple procedure? Or optionally procedure I should say. I can't see many arguments other than being able to profit from genetic disorders or that it's messing with god's will and intentions.

Side note, why are people afraid of genetically modified crops? Like if you trace it back crops have always been genetically modified just now we can do it so much more effectively.

Nothing is truly organic when it comes to crops, hell carrots used to have multiple types of colours, now because we decided the orange ones were the best, almost all carrots produced are orange and we bred carrots to be orange, we modified their genes to make sure they were all orange. Just a bit odd that people are so keen for "organic non gm crops" when all food has been genetically modified at some point.


Hell even humans have been genetically modified throughout time, what do you think evolution is? It's gradual genetic modification based off of selective pressures in the wild that caused less useful genes to die out. Only reason genetic disorders and stuff are still around is because we made our homes so safe and secure that we've reduced a huuugggeeee number of selective pressures such as competition for food and living space.

I'd genuinely like to read people's thoughts and maybe try change some minds.
Remember that this is just a friendly conversation or discussion, not a bash people for their religious believes, not a bash people for not believing in god and it's not a thread for people to hate on anyone purely for having a different opinion to us.

I strongly believe that discussing different opinions of morale issues is extremely important to not let people get too set in stone about their beliefs, would be nice if people could say "i love trump/hillary" without being hated on.
We need some unity and acceptance of other people's thoughts

 

You bring up a good point just that genetic modifications aren't mutations. A mutation implicates that there's a fault in the sequencing of the genes, all a genetic modification does is changes the sequence to make it another gene ^_^

@jackson: Joke's on you I read the whole thing... wait a sec...