P3 Blog Post

For P3 I wanted to research something that was of interest to me.  To do this I have to go outside of the course theme in the EHE.   I am studying biomedical and mechanical engineering and want to do something.  Biomedical engineering is an interesting combination of engineering and biology.  There are lots of ethical dilemmas with biomedical engineering whether the issue is about the use of stem cells or designing products that will give athletes unfair advantages.  There are also methods of delivering drugs to localized sites.  However these methods can have side effects.

If I were to talk about the entire field of biomedical engineering then I would be unable to go into any depth.  Therefore I have decided to talk about genetic engineering.  Specifically I will be talking about gene editing.  It is possible to change the gene sequence of embryos.  This is a huge breakthrough because it will allow many diseases to be cured.  Genes can be manipulated to produce insulin for people with diabetes.  Favorable genes from parents can possibly be selected as well.  Gene editing inherently has lots of controversy around it.  It can be extremely beneficial because diseases can be eradicated.

However some of the controversy around it stems from the fact that controlling genes is new.  There is naturally resistance to new ideas in the medical field because a lot of the results are unknown.  Naturally there is a part of this that “feels” wrong because you are no longer letting nature take its natural course in a sense.  In other words to some this can be dangerously close to “playing God”.  There are also other issues with gene editing.  If the process goes wrong and who is liable for it going wrong?  Is it ethical the mess with people’s lives like that?

Another huge issue with this is that it is expensive.  This means that realistically only the wealthy would be able to do this.  Therefore they would be able to create a generation of children with selected genes.  Could this potentially lead to a group of humans that are genetically gifted both physically and mentally?  These are all questions that are valid and need to be discussed.  I think this is a very interesting topic because it is new and there are not clear answers on it. 

There are a lot of stakeholders on this issue.  Pretty much everyone is affected by this.  However since it is still in its infancy most of the stakeholders will involve politicians and scientists.  There are laws in place regarding human cloning.  I have not done all my research but I am sure there are laws in place regarding gene editing.  Another huge stakeholders are universities.  Lots of research is done at universities.  Therefore it makes them a large stakeholder.  However I wish to direct my argument to the average citizen.  I think that they are the ultimate stakeholders because it is the general public that will be affected by this.  Therefore I will write my paper in a way to address concerns that will be brought up by average citizens.