This document discusses the impacts and ethical concerns of genetic engineering in medicine and agriculture. [1] Genetic engineering in medicine aims to correct genetic defects and is strictly regulated to ensure safety, while applications in agriculture are intended for intentional release and have fewer regulations. [2] There are ethical concerns about violating species integrity and treating animals as property without moral consideration. [3] Greater protections are needed for farm animals that are often neglected and have their birthrights stripped away.
3. Impact in Medicine
Corrects genetic defect that is either
inherited of acquired
Strict regulations - to ensure inhibition of
release of GE organisms into the
environment
Drugs – produced under contained
industrial conditions
4. Impact in Medicine
GE organisms – for potential therapy are
crippled to inhibit reproduction in the
environment should they accidentally
escape
New Drug/Therapy produced – undergo
extensive pre-clinical and clinical trials
- to assess efficacy and detect
undesirable side effects
5. Impact in Agriculture
Repairs something which has nothing
inherently wrong with it
GE organisms – produced for intentional
release into the environment (rarely
crippled to prevent reproduction)
Health risks of GE food – assessed
biochemically and in short-term feeding
trials with animals
6. Impact in Agriculture
Regulations – (+90%) containing GE
derived ingredients need not be labeled
Post-release monitoring – is nonexistent
7. * Contrasting the use of Genetic
Engineering in Medicine and
Agriculture
8. • Largely the same
• Different sets of rules
• The inherent, unpredictable component
largely appreciated and addressed in
medical applications and is not same in
food production.
10. Ethical Protests
Violation of species integrity
Attention to the suffering of individual
animals
Moral repugnance – animals as patentable
“manufactures and compositions of
matter”
Debasement of nonhuman animals –
human property, lacking value and claims
in their own right
11. Moral Considerations
Animals denied possession of a soul,
reason, or some other vaunted human
quality, and used without apology.
12. Environmental Movement
Animals - be given a respectful status
Animal agriculture – ecologically inefficient
and ethically obscene
13. Farm animals
Nomally abandoned by our culture
Treated with greater contempt and neglect than
other classes of animals
Stripped away of birthrights and earthrights
Poutlry – 95% of the 95% of the victims
14. Food for thought:
“If there’s anything to reincarnation and a
recycling of souls, with the decreasing
biodiversity in this planet and daily loss of
endangered species, the only place one
will be able to go if they get recycled into
another lifetime is into another human or a
farm animal.”
- Karen Davis