Essay about The Tremendous Potential of Genetic Engineering

Tissue engineering is an emerging interdisciplinary field that uses principles from engineering, biology and chemistry in an effort towards tissue regeneration. The main draw of tissue engineering is the regeneration of a patient’s own tissues and organs free from low biofunctionality and poor biocompatibility and serious immune rejection. As medical care continues to improve and life expectancy continues to grow, organ shortages become more problematic.(Manufacturing living things) According to organdonor.gov, a patient is added to the waiting list every 10 minutes and an average of 18 people die everyday waiting for an organ donation. The “nirvana” of tissue engineering is to replace the need for organ donation altogether. This could be achieved using scaffolding from

I watched Anthony Atala’s speech “Growing new organs” in TED Talks, and was convinced by Anthony that even engineered organ was very a controversial topic, it still brought benefits to patients who need tissue replacement. Anthony’s strongest delivery attribute was his language choices. He opened his speech by showing a story and research statistics of organ transplantation. For example, he pointed out: “every 30 seconds, a patient dies form diseases that could be treated with tissue replacement.” Anthony used the story and number wisely because he caught my attention and brought my interest to his speech. Also, Anthony used examples and stories of his own experience as a surgeon and a researcher. He not only established his credibility, but

The medical industry had been achieving more in the stage of medical advancements, though they are still in the early phase. Artificial organs have been one of those achievements. Although they have achieved such, artificial organs are not perfect. Most doctors as well as patients would prefer to replace a dying organ with a compatible human organ, rather than with an artificial or animal organ. Yet due to a there being less organs donated than recipients, artificial and animal organs are becoming more common in transplants. Most of this issue is because people are unaware of how organ donation works, the organs that can be donated, how many people are in need, and the advancements that have happened in the field. Organ donation saves hundreds of lives every year, but many lives are recklessly lost due to a shortage of organ donors.

There are many incurable diseases in the world that affect an organism’s way of living. Cystic Fibrosis, a disease with no known cure, affects 1 out of 3600 Canadian child’s digestive system and lungs, while a person with sickle cell anemia is only expected to live forty to sixty years. Both of these diseases are similar in the way that they are inherited genetically; they are passed on from parents to their children. Scientists are producing a way to help these people called Genetic Engineering. This is a way of modifying an organism’s genome to produce a more desirable trait by manually adding new DNA.

Adult stem cells have already proven to be successful in treating diseases and have helped hundreds of thousands of patients, and new clinical uses expand almost weekly. Adult stem cells can be obtained from cord blood, fat, neural tissue, muscle, bone marrow, placental and skin cells. Adult stem cells are increasingly being shown to have a similar and perhaps an identical capacity to become cells of other types. There is a possibility that adult stem cells may function more efficiently and more safely than embryonic cells. Treena Arinzeh, a young professor who last year won a Presidential Award, the nation's highest scientific honor, is bringing the promise of stem cell research one step closer to reality. Adult stem cells also have a unique trait that lends them their magic: Under the right conditions, or given the proper signals, they have the ability to turn into different cell types. Arinzeh is doing exactly that: developing signals, in the form of biomaterials, that will help adult stem cells turn into cells that, if injected into a diseased area of the human body, could regenerate damaged tissue. Her research has also led to two major stem-cell discoveries: One showing that stem cells, when mixed with biomaterials known as scaffolds, can help regenerate bone growth; and another proving that stem cells taken from one person can be successfully implanted into another. A list of conditions for which stem-cell treatment holds promise grows almost daily: It now

Imagine the possibility of eliminating serious genetic diseases from the world. Imagine the idea of treating, preventing or even curing diseases that are yet to be cured. Imagine the feeling of being given improved health and a prolonged lifespan. This can all be accomplished with the aide of genetic engineering. Human genetic engineering refers to the process of directly manipulating human DNA to produce wanted results. DNA is a simple but very complex chemical that has the power to change the world and has begun to do so already. Many opponents to gene therapy fail to realize that genetic engineering has great potential to become very important in the biomedical industry. Though controversy exists regarding the ethics of human genetic engineering, it can produce numerous benefits, which outweigh its disadvantages and side effects; therefore, scientists should be able to manipulate the human genome for the purpose of helping people with serious medical conditions.

An average of 16 people die in Europe each day without getting the organ they need to survive. 22 people die each day in the United States without getting the organ they need, too. All of these people who die are waiting for organs such like a liver, heart, and other organs that will help keep them alive. The scientists looked at the statistics and wanted to start to develop new organs and body parts to save the patients that are waiting for them. The scientists thought they could start by growing them in a laboratory and make them out of stem cells. They have been struggling with the development of the organs and the progress has been slowed. Other scientists have another theory in how to create a fully functioning organ. They think that everyone should let nature take over and let evolutions happen. Evolutions has helped cells adapt to outside environments and turned our cells into complex molecules that help us survive. The scientists also think that they could use an animal's’ kidney, liver, lungs, heart, and other organs that are useful to keep ourselves alive. Those organs can come from animals, like pigs, because they have somewhat the same kind of organs we have. The only problem that can occur during the operation is that, when you use transfer the heart from a pig, or another animal, our immune system will reject the transplant. People who have been studying about growing human

There are two methods of cloning organs. One is by injecting a growth factor into the wound site, causing the patient's own cells to migrate and regenerate. The other method is to harvest donor cells and pack them into a three-dimensional polymer scaffold, which is molded into the desired shape. These cells replicate and then can be transplanted into a recipient. The polymer breaks down as the cells form into the shape desired. These organs are called neo-organs. While this may sound like something straight out of a science fiction film, like Dolly, neo-organs are already a reality. All over the United States, grown skin is being used to treat everything from burn victims to skin cancer patients. Also, machines containing cloned liver cells are being used to filter blood until a transplant can be found. Cartilage, because of it's relatively simple structure, seems likely to be the next step. Larger organs will take

In the past, the only way to replace diminished cells, tissues, and organs was from organ transplantation. An organ donor was needed, and the tissues would be surgically removed from the donated body and placed into the recipient. Due to the current research being conducted, it is believed that tissue engineering and organ printing can contribute to the process of improving and saving lives.

In the United States, 122,737 patients are on the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) list that are in need of lifesaving organs. With the current UNOS system, nearly 3,300 patients are expiring every year waiting for kidney transplants, let alone the other organs needed (Foundation, 2014). The length of time and money the process takes to procure an organ from a cadaver could be nearly done away with using bioengineered organs rather than procurement. Forms of Bioengineering are done with the use of matrices alone in which the body’s natural regenerative properties correct the issue, or using matrices embedded with undifferentiated cells. With the use of Bioengineering organs of one’s own, stem cell onto matrices could reduce or eliminate the use of immunosuppressant. Bioengineering organs can change the health care by reducing the cost of care, shortening the wait for transplantation, and extending the life of the recipient. Results Many of the patients with end-stage organ failure were going untreated or minimal treatment due to the lack of insurance. In 2010 that changed when President Obama signed the health care reform act, which is expanding coverages and limiting the growth in health care cost while reforming the delivery and insurance system. Prior to the Health Care Reform Act, individuals, that had an illness could not change jobs due the fact of being ineligible for

In the future, the technology will be widely accepted since it can be used to create complete organ, to test newly developed drugs on manufactured cells instead of animals and human cell, to imprint cells directly onto a human body, thus reducing the wait time for organ transplantation, and save time and cost associated with drug research. An absolutely favorable position of customized organs is designing organs utilizing a patient 's own particular cells. With this methodology, there would be no issues with dismissal, and patients wouldn 't need to take the powerful anti-rejection medications that are presently required (Cooper-White, 2015). According to the Organovo company, the formation of a suitable liver is a crunch second for the bio-printing and drug industry since it demonstrates 3D printed tissue can be preserved successfully for a sufficient time to test the impacts of medications on it or insert it in a human body where it can further mature (Mearian,2013).

While some view the use of human-pig chimeras as a solution to the organ shortage problem, the demand for organs should “not dictate the solution.” Instead of continuing to manipulate animals and cause them to suffer even further by the hands of human beings, we should try to find alternative solutions

The liver is known in the medical community as a miracle organ because is it the only known organ in the human body that can regenerate itself if half of it is cut out. Tissue regeneration has always been a desirable fantasy, but now it is almost a possibility. Human embryonic stem cells are pluripotent cells that, although unspecialized, can differentiate into various specialized cells, such as nerves, muscle, skin, or even blood. Sadly, controversy surrounds this relatively new scientific concept and it threatens to destroy the potential of this discovery before scientists even have a chance to study it thoroughly. Human embryonic stem cell research should be permitted to advance due to the potential of being able to treat or cure diseases, and the additional knowledge that the scientific community can gain about human development.

The medical advances of donor organs and organ transplants have made incredible leaps and bounds in recent decades. Today we can grow stem cells from normal skin tissues, but there are still ethical arguments against the practice of using stem cells for medical procedures. Being able to produce these stem cells from our body tissues is a huge bound forward in medical advances. With that, it is possible to create an organ for the individual who needs it; increasing the organ's viability and ability to be used; ensuring there is no damage or contaminates from donor organs. Now of course even lab-grown organs have its list of ethical backlash that it has faced in recent years. Medical professionals and scientists are already growing organs

So many solutions are coming out of the medical field. There’s lots of new medical discoveries and innovations that can terminate the organ shortage crisis. From creating stem cells to 3D printing and going through the regular route of organ donations, patients can receive their transplants within a reasonable time period. There are benefits and there's also defects that can be found in any medical innovation. Scientists are always problem-solving to find solutions to help extend human life. This allows scientists to experiment and improve their research techniques. With so many lives at stake, the race to solve the organ shortage is on. Since the new discovery of xenotransplantation, and finding solutions to help extend this idea. Xenotransplantation is one of the many astounding medical advancements in history and can change the course of science in the future. Human life is precious and needs to be examined profoundly. All lives come at a high cost and should be