Martin

Melissa Martin
Professor Malcolm Campbell
English 1103
September 26, 2016
The Good, the Bad, and the Dangers of Unregulated Genetic Engineering
The doctor walks in, but he is avoiding your gaze. Your heart drops. Its not your health
his information impacts, but to some extent you wish it was. He tells you that your baby, the one
who hasnt even started its life yet, will suffer from muscular dystrophy. They will grow strong
for only a few years before their muscles actually start to waste away. They will be confined to a
wheelchair. Eventually, even the muscles controlling their breathing will cease to function. Some
treatments for this condition exist, but no cure. What if this disease could have been prevented
altogether? Advances in genetic engineering hold the key to curing genetically passed diseases
like muscular dystrophy. However, this field of research comes with as many drawbacks as
benefits. Increasing international policies to regulate genetic engineering is the primary way to
guarantee it remains a greater boon than danger to humanity as it is advanced.
Bioengineering, or the science of making changes to the genes of a plant or animal to
produce a desired result (Genetic Engineering), comes in many forms. One such form is
genetically modified organisms (GMO). This term is most commonly used in reference to foods
altered on a genetic level, especially crops. Through genetic modification, the growth rates of
plants can be increased, as can their resistance to chemicals in pesticides. Genetically modifying
crops also serves to improve global nutrition and decrease world hunger. This is accomplished
by introducing vitamins into the genes of foods that do not ordinarily contain them and by
altering plant DNA so that the plant yields more crop per harvest. Golden rice is a GMO created

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by the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. Beginning in 2002, this institute
sought to address a global vitamin A deficiency, the leading cause of blindness in the global
south. Through genetic engineering, researchers successfully created a new strain of rice inserted
with beta-carotene, the gene that gives carrots their orange color and is transformed by the body
into vitamin A (Philpott).
This research, started fourteen years ago, continues today. Why? Delays to this research
mirror the overall drawbacks of genetic engineering. First, the science itself is difficult to
accomplish. In the case of golden rice, researchers are struggling to perfect a strain that is as
economically effective as regular rice. However, beta-carotene slows the growth rate of rice, so,
for the same time and resources, non-genetically modified rice is the more productive crop. The
second cause of delays in this GMO research is the ethical debate surrounding genetic
engineering. In the Philippines, protesters vandalized experimental crop fields on several
occasions, stalling the research (Philpott). Genetic engineering is viewed through a lens of fear
by the general public, and for good reason. That reason, the third major drawback to genetic
engineering, is a disparity between policies regulating this science between countries. According
to David Zilberman, an agricultural economist from the University of California at Berkeley,
many developing nations, including the Philippines, are heavily regulated by the Cartagena
Protocol on Biosafety. This protocol promotes the observance of caution in the introduction of
GMO products. It does so through restrictions on research trials, but stands in sharp contrast to
the more laissez-faire one that holds sway in the United States says Zilberman (qtd. in Philpott).
In fact, as of 2011, an article posted by Mother Jones reported that policies for monitoring
genetic research in the United States are openly nonexistent. Genetic engineering is not
appropriately regulated to inspire confidence in citizens that they are safe in the face of new

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advances. The difficulty of this science, discontent of the general public in to this research, and
disparities of policies between nations limit its progression.
What exactly could go wrong with genetic engineering that causes fear in humanity and
warrants the need for increased international regulations? The creations of new diseases,
pesticide resistant insects, and the overstepping of moral boundaries are potential results of
abusing genetic engineering practices. Any discussion of genetic engineering that takes place
today is severely biased. The sources still reporting on its regulation tend to be opinionated, like
Mother Jones, a leading liberal news source that reports on politics and human rights. Mother
Jones articles focus on the role government should play in different controversial areas like
bioengineering. The 2011 deregulation of genetically modified crops reported by Mother Jones
in the United States was one such controversial issue. The United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA) made the bureaucratic decision to not only revoke certain GMO regulations,
but to do so on the Friday before a holiday weekend when fewer individuals were tuned into the
news. This decision suggests the USDA recognized the controversy of their actions and desired
to avoid outrage by the nation. The regulation they revoked was the Plant Pest Act, which,
according to the senior scientist from the Union of Concerned Scientists' Food and Environment
Program, Gurian-Sherman, "was always just a regulatory hook to give the USDA authority to
regulate engineered crops. Everyonethe industry, industry watchdogs, the USDAalways
knew it was a fiction. The reason this act was revoked was because it held very little regulatory
power in the first place. But, despite the weak power of this act, at least it permitted the USDA to
intervene in genetic research of crops when necessary. The USDA took a weak approach to
addressing problems of genetic engineering by deregulating rather than replacing or expanding
policies in place. By creating international laws to regulate genetic engineering, all nations

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would have set guidelines to adhere to. There would not be, for example, the disparity in policy
viewed between the Philippines and the United States, and all people would be guaranteed a
level of protection from abuses to this science that they currently lack.
Aside from increases in food production and the introduction of vitamins in foods easily
accessible to countries with poor nutrition, bioengineering is revolutionizing the field of
medicine. Research is being conducted globally, including in North Carolina at the Wake Forest
School of Medicine. There, professor and director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative
Medicine Anthony Atala explores a field of genetic engineering quite different than the methods
employed in the creation of GMOs: instead of altering the human genome to present a desirable
trait or prevent an undesirable one, another vector of the world of genetic engineering is the
creation of organs using a patients own stem cells. Atala is looking into the creation of human
ears for injured soldiers (Enrique). In another case, infamous toddler Hannah Warren received a
bioengineered trachea. This young girl was born with a rare condition known as tracheal
agenesis, meaning she was born without a windpipe. Her parents sought an unconventional
method of treatment upon learning their daughter was only likely to live a few more years. They
discovered a doctor who could, and was willing, to create a windpipe for their daughter using her
own living stem cells and a scaffold (Mintz). This breakthrough idea has many benefits, but is
also often faced with hesitation. Many critics of the procedure believe that the science is being
taken out of the lab prematurely and that those who performed Hannah's procedure were actually
attempting to play God. Critics also argue researchers use desperate patients as human guinea
pigs to test their science (Carroll). The problem with new innovative medical procedures is that
the first patients to receive treatment are in fact being experimented on. International laws should

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be created to dictate not only if a new research is acceptable, but when it is acceptable to test on
humans.
If GMOs are viewed negatively by the general public and fear surrounds medical testing
of this science, then cloning is often seen as a heinous taboo. In reality, this form of genetic
engineering holds the potential to prevent mitochondrial diseases like muscular dystrophy and
increase human access to biological materials like insulin. Muscular dystrophy is the result of
faulty mitochondria. Using techniques similar to those involved in the process of animal cloning,
genetic material is extracted from the embryo and placed into the egg of a donor woman with
functioning mitochondria (Cloning Dolly the Sheep). AnimalResearch.info, known as the
global resource for scientific evidence in animal research, explains some of the ways animal
cloning has been used to produce medicines and increase human understanding of genetics. For
years, scientists have been able to insert human genes into other mammals like cows and sheep
so they can produce said genes for harvest. Factor IX, a blood-clotting agent that treats
hemophilia, is an example of a gene that can be grown in animals for the use of humans who
cannot make this factor on their own. The problem with the creation of genes in this fashion is
that it is laborious to accomplish. Through cloning, researchers only have to insert the genes
once then replicate the desired transgenic animal (Cloning Dolly the Sheep).
However, like any science, cloning is only beneficial if its abuses are limited. The cloning of
animals has concrete benefits whereas the cloning of humans has concrete drawbacks including
cost and moral debates. Even now, after advances in cloning allow commercial services to
clone pets or elite breeding livestock, [there is] still a $100,000 price-tag (Cloning Dolly
the Sheep). Cloning a human, a complex mammal in comparison to the others that have been
successfully cloned, raises the price even higher. In regards to policies regulating human

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cloning, 71% of countries had not taken action to ban it as of 2007. In fact, twelve countries,
including but not limited to Australia, Japan, the UK and India, had even given the green light to
human cloning for research purposes (CGS). Cloning has global implications. If it is allowed
in one area of the world and not another, researchers will go to where it is allowed and the
dangers some countries are trying to avoid will be enabled. A global decision needs to be made
about cloning specifically and genetic engineering in general.
There are two main types of treaties currently regulating genetic engineering at an
international level: human rights treaties and international treaties. As the name suggests, human
rights treaties outline prohibitions with the intention of protecting human rights. This is a
difficult foundation to build regulations on. Human rights, because they apply to all people
independent of culture, run on principles rather than rules. As such, human rights treaties do not
necessitate an action and are instead open for a wide range of interpretations (Gunderson). In
some cases, this encourages acceptance of all ideals. In the matter of genetic engineering, it
effectively nullifies the decrees of treaties as any nation wishing to act against them can argue
they are still fulfilling the treaty as is seen by their culture. In addition, human rights themselves
may be degraded by this form of treaty if exceptions ever need to be made, even for beneficial
tasks like curing diseases, because human rights are supposed to be constant with no exceptions.
Martin Gunderson, professor of philosophy at Macalester College, further outlines the
complexity of utilizing human rights treaties as a form of regulation by defining human rights as
the rights of future humans as well as humans currently alive. In other words, human rights
treaties need to be written in a way that they will not become outdated with changes in
technology. In-vitro fertilization is one example of how a questioned technology became the
norm (Gunderson). Upon its creation, the results of this fertility method were referred to

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derogatively as test tube babies. If regulations had been passed forbidding this technique when
it was still an issue of high moral concern, countless parents would have remained childless.
Two main human rights treaties govern genetic engineering. The first is the Council of
Europes Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with
regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine: Convention of Human Rights and
Biomedicine which limits genetic engineering. It does so by declaring an intervention seeking to
modify the human genome may only be undertaken for preventative, diagnostic or therapeutic
purposes and only if its aim is not to introduce any modification in the genome of any
descendants. This addresses the fear that genetic engineering will have unintended
consequences in the future, including the creation of new diseases and defects. However, there is
no way to regulate that countries follow this treaty, and those who have not signed it are still free
to experiment on the genome of future generations. Because of the very consistency and
universality of human rights, they arent open to negotiation or compromise. Human rights
treaties do not provide the necessary criteria of solidarity between countries and against certain
actions that is required to pacify fears of altering future generations for the worse through genetic
engineering.
International treaties, despite their name, are not in fact regulatory of all nations. Instead,
only those nations that sign the agreement are bound by the treaty. International laws binding
every nation should therefore be created to institute the necessary limits on the whole world. In
addition, the creation of international laws would revitalize the discussion of regulations on
genetic engineering. We need to revitalize international discussion of genetic engineering to
address technological advancements and cultural changes resulting from the passage of time.

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There are countless benefits and drawbacks to genetic engineering; the only way to
guarantee the former outweighs the latter is to outline what is and is not allowed for every nation
in regards to this science.

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Works Cited
Caroll, Linda. "A Leap of Faith: Desperate Patients Look to Lab-Grown Organs." NBC News.
N.p., 27 June 2014. Web. 09 Nov. 2016.
CGS : National Polices on Human Genetic Modification: A Preliminary Survey. Center for
genetics and society 15 Nov. 2007, geneticsandsociety.org. Web. Accessed 08 Nov.
2016.
"Cloning Dolly the Sheep." AnimalResearch.Info. AnimalResearch.Info, n.d. Web. 06 Nov.
2016.
Enrique, Juan, Speaker. The next species of human. TED Talk, 2009.
"Genetic Engineering." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, 1828. Web. Accessed 08 Nov.
2016.
Gunderson, Martin. "Enhancing Human Rights: How The Use Of Human Rights Treaties To
Prohibit Genetic Engineering Weakens Human Rights." Journal Of Evolution &
Technology 18.1 (2008): 1-8. Academic Search Complete. Web. 6 Oct. 2016.
Mintz, Zoe. "Hannah Warren: 2-Year-Old Toddler Born Without A Windpipe Becomes
Youngest Person To Receive Bioengineered Organ [PHOTO]." International Business
Times. N.p., 30 Apr. 2013. Web. 09 Nov. 2016.
Philpott, Tom. "WTF Happened to Golden Rice?" Mother Jones. Mother Jones and the
Foundation for National Progress, 03 Feb. 2016. Web. 08 Nov. 2016.