Benefits and Dangers of Genetic Engineering

To address this question, it is necessary to give an overview of the origins of Eugenics and how they were adopted and adapted by the Nazi party. I will then write of the relationship between Eugenics and modern genetic engineering practices, the uses of genetic engineering and the ethical debates surrounding the subject. Finally, I will consider the benefits and dangers of such technology, what angles and policy we should adopt towards it and who should be made accountable for how genetic engineering is used.

The roots of the Eugenics concept and one of the most referenced sources in the Eugenics discussion is Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection, first published in his book The Origin of species (1859). Ever since Darwin’s ideas first gained recognition they have been contentious because many people have interpreted what he wrote of as the human world being governed by a ‘law of the jungle’, rather than the idea of a slow and natural evolutionary process which he intended to convey. The general consensus is that ‘Survival of the Fittest’ means those with best adapted genes will eventually take precedence over others with inferior genes through evolution. As written by Richard Dawkins, one of the most renowned philosophers of this century; “We, the individual survival machines in the world, can expect to live a few more decades. But genes in the world have an expectation of life that must be measured not in decades, but in thousands and millions of years” (Dawkins 1976; 34). Despite science supposing to dispel ignorance and increase prosperity among mankind, the misinterpretation and skewing of Darwin’s original ideas undermine the idea of enlightenment being the triumph of science, if people misinterpret and misuse them. According to many scholars, the idea of natural selection is one of the key laws that govern us. “Evolution ranks with gravity, the central concept in physics, and affinity, the key idea of chemistry, as one of the most basic concepts in the natural sciences” (Young, 2002).

When the word Eugenics was coined in 1883, the word didn’t have the unpleasant connotations it generally does now, although the term has always gestured that some members of society will be genetically inferior. Eugenics was originally termed by the cousin of Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, a man “who pioneered the mathematical treatment of Heredity, taking the word from a Greek root meaning ‘good in birth’” (Kelves, 1995). Who did give the word eugenics the shady tone? It’s largely thought that it was the adoption of Eugenic ideas and terrible deeds carried out in the name of eugenics by the Nazi’s that was the cause. While there is much truth in this, and it is true that eugenics became notorious because of the Nazi’s, the roots of fanatical eugenics can be traced back to America prior to use in Europe, and it is also known that the Nazi’s borrowed from and idealized the prior American eugenics applications; where “under the banner of ‘national regeneration’, tens of thousands, mostly poor women, were subjected to involuntary sterilization” (Platt, 2003), a practice which was also carried over to Black people and the “feeble minded”.