Among these discoveries and breakthroughs, genetic manipulation has the ability to tackle urgent issues in healthcare, agriculture, bioremediation, and other fields. It is important to closely supervise the use of these technologies, hence the need for ethics in innovation, which are rules and guidelines essential for guiding moral decision-making and ensuring that these advancements in technology are applied in a way that improves the welfare of people, communities, and the environment. They also serve to prevent unethical practices, especially in areas like genetic engineering.
Genetic manipulation, whether in biotechnology, agriculture, or healthcare, involves the process of changing an organism's genetic makeup to produce desired features. Seeing that genetic manipulation has the potential to cause significant changes, ethical considerations are very important.
Prior to the advent of genetic engineering, there were high rates of infectious diseases that were very contagious, and the death rate from specific hereditary illnesses was also high during that time. However, as genetic manipulation techniques have advanced, vaccines and other preventative measures have been developed through the manipulation of genes. As we all know, vaccines are vital tools in public health, helping to reduce the global spread of infectious diseases and saving countless lives.
The use of genetic alterations therapy in recent years for certain hereditary abnormalities, like sickle cell anaemia, has offered a glimpse of hope to millions of people affected by one kind or another of hereditary illness.
For instance, the recent use of adenoviruses in cancer therapy is a result of gene manipulations, which have provided targeted therapy options that have the potential to enhance patient outcomes and quality of life. The use of these adenoviruses has shown a significant advancement in the fight against cancer. These therapeutic approaches involving the manipulation of genes have lessened the harmful side effects of conventional cancer treatments like radiation and chemotherapy by specifically targeting and killing only cancer cells while protecting healthy cells. This therapy, the use of adenovirus, has the potential to be less intrusive and more effective as a cancer treatment.
Image is mine.
Reproductive medicine has also been transformed by genetic manipulation, giving couples with fertility problems hope. Numerous couples can now conceive and have children thanks to in vitro fertilisation (IVF) procedures, which manipulate genetic material to assist fertilisation outside the body. Thanks to this technology, couples now have more options for reproductive therapy.
If you look around the world today, with the current world population, it's unlikely that the current world population will be able to survive without the introduction of genetic manipulation in terms of agriculture. It has become essential to use genetic manipulation in agriculture to feed the world's ever-expanding population.
Animal and food crop types that are more resistant to pests, illnesses, and environmental stresses have been developed, increasing yields and improving the consistency of food production, thanks to genetic manipulation. Food security has increased, and sustainable agricultural practices have been made possible by the growth of food crops that grow faster.
Finally, cases of unethical approaches employing genetic manipulation have been revealed, and these approaches have the huge potential to ruin the world even with innovative ethics in place. There are documented cases of scientists utilising microbes as bioweapons. The benefits of genetic engineering exceed the disadvantages; nonetheless, we should always use this potential for good, minimising risks and unintended consequences by approaching the process with ethical considerations in mind.
I did my B.Sc. and M.Sc. programme in Microbiology, and the topic of my M.Sc. seminar was the use of adenovirus for cancer therapy. I opted to focus more on genetic manipulation since I love genetics, even though it's fairly complex in Microbiology. Certain microbes can be used not only in medicine but also in the identification of petroleum-filled areas and in bioremediation, particularly when non-biodegradable chemicals are involved.
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