Essay/Term paper: Biotechnology

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Chemistry

Biotechnology


Over the past decade, Biotechnology has advanced much to the
advantage of many people. We have learned that with certain chemicals,
we are able to cut-and-paste the DNA of certain organisms, and alter
them to comply to our sociable needs. But this can also affect modern
medicine, political factors, economic, and societal balances in our
nation.
For medicine, Biotechnology has been a blessing, healing people
who suffer from a sex-linked trait known as Hemophilia. Hemophilia is
a condition where the person may die of blood loss when cut or
wounded. This is caused by a lack of a certain chemical known as
Factor 9, which allows the patient to heal from wounds. Scientists may
now insert a gene into the patients own DNA causing the patient to
heal skin, which has been impossible until now, with Genetic-Engineering.
I doubt that there have been any real disadvantages with this
technology, since it works to heal the patient, but we really can't
predict what kind of medical misfits there will be in the future,
using this life-saving technology to their own personal, perhaps evil,
advantages.
Dealing with politics, Bioengineering has opened a whole new
door pertaining to the military, whose use of it may create an
ultimate destruction. The alterance of nature is un-natural, and creates
an unbalancement in life. When we use this technology towards the
wrong side, we may all be burned. You see, Biotechnology has the
ability to altar what diseases we humans are susceptible to, and when
scientists create something to eliminate immunities to diseases, it may
result in a mass destruction of the evolved living being known as
the human. This may sound tragic, but this is what Biotechnology is
all about; changing genes so that they may fit our societal and
economic needs. The government has probably taken this germ-warfare in
to consideration, and is leading to an unhappy resolution. In this
case, Biotechnology has no advantages.
Socially, Biotechnology is a breakthrough in science. Our new
techniques of giving nature a hand, in this case, will pave the road
of the genetic highway to come in the future. We are now able to
create the perfect tomato, the largest, reddest apples, and the
plumpest grapes. We can score more milk by the cow, and create new
chemicals to heal people. This is a society where we need not worry
about a plague affecting our fruits and vegetation, nor our dairy and
meat products. When we do not need to worry about certain factors
like a draught or massive rain, we have a sociable balance between us
and nature. Scientists have used biotechnology to an advantage here,
and it seems applaudable. Yet, disadvantages may include harmful new
substances in the plants being compounded together that may cause an
allergic reaction to people. This is rare, and we shouldn't really
worry about it, but we should be open-minded and consider these things.

When it comes to the economy, people are most in desire for
foods which are worth the money they spend on. Since we can now
create the ultimate fruit, we should be able to produce them more
quickly. And since consumers want more, we will then gain much capitol,
creating a fine economic balance. For example, we are not making
enough money because our cows cannot produce enough milk. Scientist and
genetic engineers can now insert a gene which lets them make not only
more milk, but the type of milk they want created. Now, we are
wasting less to create more of something, and indeed has shown to
increase economical factors extensively.
Even though we have accomplished this in modern society, we
are still young in the genetic age of science. We have yet to
unleash the complete possibilities of biotechnology, like the creation
of whole organisms, fully functional and self-sufficient. We have
successfully generated an entire plant from a leaf, but compared to
that, us humans are far more complicated and sophisticated. I myself
stand that biotechnology can be used to our advantage, but I sternly
warn you as Albert Einstein warned President Roosevelt about his
discoveries of nuclear energy, that biotechnology can be a devastating
new weapon, used to destroy human kind. I believe that the technology
will flourish into the society as the computer has, having your own
genetic lab at home so that you may cure yourself of a disease. But
biotechnology is more than that, being that it will pave the future
technological highway; perhaps instead of robots, we will have cloned
entire human beings to work for us. There are endless possibilities,
and we must take caution in them.