The Pros And Cons Of Genetic Engineering

The Oxford Dictionary describes ethics as being ‘moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or how they conduct an activity’, so we ask the questions; are the reasons for using technology like CRISPR moral? Is it for the greater good? (Oxford Dictionary, 2016). In this essay we will look at the good and the bad aspects of CRISPR and endeavour to come to a conclusion on whether genetic modification of the germline is ethical or not. Germline modification is of particular importance as these will be manipulations passed onto ones offspring. It is an exciting era for the Scientific Community. The human nuclear genome contains 3, 200, 000, 000 nucleotide base pairs, the basic molecules of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), the very idea that

Now, in this modern era scientists are able to manipulate DNA and edit genes using remarkable machinery called CRISPR which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. In 1987; Yoshizumi Ishino discovered repeated sequences within E. coli but did not realise they were CRISPR, in 2002 the term CRISPR was coined by Ruud Jansen and scientists discovered genes for the enzyme Cas which cuts DNA, Eugene Koonin proposed CRISPR’s purpose and Rodolphe Barrangou proved this in 2005. Then in 2012 Emmanuelle Charpentier co-discovered the CRISPR-Cas system along with Jennifer Doudna who determined the mechanism using biochemistry, together they demonstrated that human cells could be edited outside the body (Timeline: CRISPR-Cas9, no date, Jinek et al., 2012, Deltcheva et al., 2011, Barrangou et al., 2007, Mojica et al., 2005,Jansen et al., 2002). Finally, Feng Zhang, considered one of the world’s most ground-breaking scientists at age 34, developed CRISPR as a biological tool and is the first to patent it. When the