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Changing The Gene Line?

Good Essays

Matthew Davis
Dr. Bettina Jones
UCORE-44
September 24, 2015
Changing the Gene Line When having a baby, the physical appearance cannot be determined until birth, but what if advancements in technology could allow you to do so? Dr. James Hughes suggests the idea of allowing parents to have the option to choose their kids physical attributes. In order for this to take place, a child’s DNA would have to be mutated in the early months of conception. To many people this may seem superficial, but the roots of this idea could go much deeper. Changing a child’s DNA early in its life could allow for the possibility to prevent diseases such as cancer and Huntington’s disease. This process known as gene therapy and consists different treatments such as “replacing a mutated gene that cause disease with a healthy copy of a gene, knocking out a mutated gene that is functioning improperly, or introducing a new gene to help fight against diseases” (Gene Therapy). This discovery is not only limited to unborn babies, but would be also performed for adults too. Even though some scientist and doctors have the ability to do this the question always arises, should they do this? Changing the DNA of a child or even an adult is a huge controversial topic that several organizations fight over. So where is the fine line between altering DNA ethical and unethical? Several people find the topic extremely unethical. People argue that changing genes is taking the one thing that makes humans individual

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