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For those of you that don’t know (most of you), news of the world’s first genetically engineered embryo was just recently released to the public. You can read the story here.

Genetic engineering. Bring it up and you’re bound to start an ethics debate that ranges from “it shouldn’t be done at all” to “well okay, but only to help cure diseases” to “I’m all for it, designer babies and all!”. I’m somewhere roughly around the middle section. Genetic engineering should only be used for the removal of disease causing genes and for little cosmetic changes, like sex and eye or hair color. Genetically engineering smart humans seems a bit too “godly” at this point in time.

There are those who think it is wrong to experiment with a being that has the potential to grow up to be an ordinary person. While I can see an ethical dilemma, I strongly believe that human experimentation is our next step forward. We can learn so much about ourselves by actually studying and testing ourselves.

Before we can begin playing with human “life”, we have to move past the ethical issues. I have some ideas.

1. For some people, the definition of life begins at the point of conception. This is highly irrational. At that point, the fertilized egg is pretty much in the “I-just-involved-into-a-multicellular-organism” stage. The equivalent of a bacterium that suddenly gained a new cell. We obviously don’t have problems killing bacteria, I mean, look at all the cleaning materials we use daily. And don’t even think of giving me the “well, bacteria are harmful” excuse, because sure some are harmful, but there are a lot of bacteria that benefit humans. Those very ethical people have no problem killing bacteria. Hell, bacteria even has the potential to involve into an intelligent being, some billions of years from now. How do you think we got started?

2. While there are tons of anti-animal cruelty people who are completely against animal testing, there obviously aren’t nearly enough people who are against it that can possibly do anything to stop it. What’s the difference between us humans and mice? Mice are quite intelligent beings, even if they might not have intelligence such as us. Humans are animals too. Is it because we can speak our minds about things? What if mice could communicate with us, don’t you think they’d want us to stop testing them? If we’re going to really go through the process of animal testing, then why the hell shouldn’t we stop beating around the bush and test new drugs and techniques on the things that are actually going to be using them?

3. Fine. Humans are different than rats. Different species, I get it. Let’s make a new species of humans. Even if this is a bit like “playing god”, I still think it’d be pretty cool. We could create a whole new race of beings who’s sole purpose in life would be for human experimentation. Genetically engineer out their ability to have conscious thoughts and the ability to communicate with us. We’d make lab mice, only with the exact same physiology as humans, thus removing the ethical issues and helping us learn more about ourselves. We could call them Homo musculus!

Well that’s all the ideas I’ve come up with so far. Remember, if you really don’t want to die a slow painful death and suffer through most of your life, advocate genetic engineering! Because sometimes humans need to get over themselves and their unreasonable ethical values and focus on the advancement of science. We’re not at the stage where we have a choice between whether or not we can continue our research. We have to. Or we’ll all die. Soon. Well, not really but you get my point.

This post is tagged Biology, Ethics, Genetic Engineering, Genetics, Human Experimentation, Science

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