Genetic Engineering a Double Helix :: Science Medical Essays

As we move on into the 21st century we understructure go steady back at all the wonderful achievements we have made in the ambit of medicine. While nearly all of those advancements have been good, we are sometimes remaining to wonder about the ethics behind it all. No one will say that helping another person with a disease is wrong but, they index say that the technique you are using is wrong. There is a moral dilemma involved with issuing placebos to patients undergoing a study. While granted they scratch up for the study and know that they might well get a placebo they do so in the hope that they get the real treatment. Sometimes it can seem cruel when the patients with the placebo get worse or die while the ones who actually got treated do better. This is a necessary part of advancing medicine. promptly that we know that there is at least one medical practice that can be considered wrong, others could be as well. One up and coming system entails altering ourselves at the v ery genetic level, the most fundamental part of our being. It entails altering our DNA to eliminate or alleviate a plethora of disorders permanently. Is this a good thing? We have a saying, Pride goeth before a fall. This means that those who are arrogant are very likely to fail miserably. ar we going too far in attempts to change our genetic structure? Or are we not doing enough? Robert L. Sinsheimer, chancellor at UCSC describes the power possibilities of genetics as follows, In Homo Sapiens something new appeared on this small globe. The next step of evolution is ours. We must devise that once again on this sweet planet a fairer species will arise. (1) (Moraczewski, 101) Is it even our place to decide this? And who will make such evolutionary decisions? To understand how this powerful new field of medicine resolves you must first understand how a few related things function. In 1943 Oswald Avery proved that Deoxyribonucleic Acid not protein carried genetic information. (5) The Double roll structure of DNA wasnt discovered until 1953 by the combined efforts of James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin. (5) Eventually enough data was collected from each others work that they were finally able to deduce the correct structure. They knew that the phosphates were on the outside of the molecule, and that certain nitrogen bases always occurred in a 11 ratio.