Pros and Cons - Debbie Newman, Ben Woolgar 2014
Genetic engineering
Section H. Health, science and technology
One must be careful to distinguish between genetic engineering — actual tampering with the genetic code of a being or an embryo — and other forms of intervention in the natural process. This debate focuses on both the genetic modification of crops, which is generally done to produce better commercial and agricultural plant life by making them last longer or be more resistant to disease, and genetic modification of human and animal cells. Most debates will naturally focus on one of these or the other, but they do contain overlapping issues (some of the issues in the human type are also dealt with in the previous debate on ’eugenics: IVF and genetic screening’).
Pros
[1] Genetic engineering may sound spooky, but in fact, it is a harmless and welcome initiative. There is nothing special about genetic code that distinguishes intervention in it from any of the other ways in which we intervene in natural biological processes. Moreover, we know more and more about genetics with every passing year; now is the time to seize on that knowledge.
[2] There are many benefits to the plant world with the use of genetic engineering, and these are of immense significance to the world’s starving millions. Perhaps the most immediate is the creation of crop varieties that are resistant to disease, thereby requiring fewer pesticides and thus safeguarding the environment. Even more important, the development of varieties that require little in the way of expensive chemical treatments will be a boon to the developing world.
[3] Genetic engineering is nothing new. Man has been ’genetically engineering’ crops and livestock by artificial selection for thousands of years. Wheat could never have evolved in the wild without it; the domestic cat is an artificial animal, the result of 4,000 years of ’unnatural’ breeding. But in the past we had to genetically engineer indirectly, by painstaking cross-breeding with the hope of keeping certain genes. Genetic engineering allows us to transfer genes one at a time, and with a far greater degree of certainty. It is a revolution only in technique.
[4] Problems of dysfunctional varieties that may arise are nothing to be alarmed about. They would equally have arisen from cross-breeding and simply illustrate that genetic engineering should be employed with as much care as any other cross-breeding technique.
[5] Genetic engineering can be used in humans in two ways — either germ-line therapy or somatic therapy. The former involves engineering genes in the sex cells of potential parents to alter the genetic material inherited by their offspring (e.g. seeking to remove the gene for Alzheimer’s or MS) and thus has longterm repercussions. Somatic therapy deals only with the individual during his or her lifetime and is not inherited — for example, giving a diabetic person a gene to produce insulin internally. We should be more cautious with germ-line therapy, but both can be used for the medical benefit of humanity.
Cons
[1] We should not readily intervene in genetic codes, because we do not know what the consequences will be. While we believe that we are starting to understand genetics better, we do not really understand properly how genes interact; that is different from visible, tested interventions in medicine and science, because it is so speculative.
[2] Genetic engineering involves human beings acting in a sphere that should be the preserve of God, or at least of natural evolution. In the quest for ever greater profits, we are meddling with processes that we barely understand.
[3] The promises made now about genetic engineering are reminiscent of those made about pesticides in the 1950s and 1960s (e.g. DDT which threatened wildlife), which proved disastrous for the food chain. Like all science from nuclear power to the ’green revolution’, we can be sure that genetic engineering will promise far more than it will deliver, and create problems no one can predict.
[4] Genetic engineering poses serious risks which we barely understand. For example, a soybean variety that had been engineered to resist a herbicide was withdrawn from sale after it was discovered that a Brazil nut gene inserted into the soybean DNA caused an allergic reaction in people allergic to nuts. Genetically altered cotton plants lose their own immune system, thus leaving them vulnerable to aphid attack.
[5] Genes are related to each other in complex ways that we do not always understand. We know that some genes with negative effects (e.g. the gene for sickle cell anaemia) survive because of the positive benefits they also bring (immunity from malaria).We do not know what benefits and essential human traits we are playing with when we permanently alter genetic make-up at the germ-line level. We should err on the side of caution and have a moratorium on genetic engineering until our knowledge is better developed. The prejudices of the current age (in favour, perhaps, of very narrow sporting, economic or intellectual abilities) will be inscribed into our genetic heritage for centuries to come. This sort of mentality was behind the Nazi ideology that resulted in the Jewish Holocaust.
Possible motions
This House supports the use of genetic engineering in the natural world.
This House calls for a stop to all research on human genetic engineering.
Related topics
Eugenics: IVF and genetic screening