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My Standpoint Is Against Genetic Engineering

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The 1970s was a decade filled with scientific innovations – a prime example being the launch of the voyager program, or the various explosions in understanding of physics and leaps in technological genius – but one particular biological idiosyncrasy of the period still sparks debate among the population today. In 1973, Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen presented their findings from radical experiments carried out from the beginning of 1970 until the previous year, showing the world that one organism could successfully survive after being modified to incorporate genes from another. Initially the test subjects were simply bacteria cells, but as time moved on ambitions grew, leading scientists eventually to larger organisms; plants, …show more content…

Take Dolly, the cloned sheep. Her creation was deemed a dramatic step over scientific boundaries, but less widely known is the fact that despite Dolly’s survival, the experiment in actual fact involved 277 embryos, of which this singular specimen was the only survivor. Nor did she survive very long – Dolly died of a respiratory disease at just age 6. Cloned sheep aside, genetic modification has been infiltrating its way into modern livestock farming slowly but surely. The livestock themselves, the animals whose products are marketed for human consumption, are not genetically modified directly. However the concern is that a large amount of their food is comprised of GM crops. Plants and grains produced for a high yield and fast growth have been proven to possess fewer nutrients than an animal would consume in the wild, and often this specially engineered produce is all that livestock are fed. A battery diet of vitamin-deficient, mass-produced crops can have some serious side effects. A lack of nutrients in a cow’s diet, for example, can lead to less energy and fat production, less digestive efficiency, and severe issues in reproduction such as weak, blind or even miscarried calves. The outbreak of a disease dubbed ‘the yellow death’ in Denmark shows rather convincing evidence of being influenced by the use of GMOs to feed pigs, as the animals

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