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.

1. Genetic Engineering
I. Impact in Medicine and Agriculture
II. Ethical and Safety Concern

2. I. Impact in Medicine and
Agriculture

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.

9. II. Ethical Considerations and
Safety Concerns

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