Genetic Engineering Essay -- Argumentative Persuasive Essays

Genetic Engineering Most people take for granted the food that they consume each and every day will be safe and nutritious. When they wake up in the morning they do not have to think about getting enough food to survive the day. In order for the agriculture industry, that produces food and clothing for everyone, to keep up with our growing population it needs to utilize new technology. Agriculture has to find ways to produce more crops while many fertile acres of land are lost to development. Many people who like to eat the food produced would like to do away with genetic engineering; this would lead to lack of food and increased starvation around the world. Genetic engineering is the artificial moving of genes from one species to another. Genes are special chemicals that work as sets of blueprints to determine an organism's traits. Moving genes from one organism to another moves those traits. This gene transfer allows traits that would never naturally occur in a certain species to be inserted into the DNA of that species. Scientists can take a gene for blue coat color from a sea urchin and transplant it into a brown horse to get a blue horse. In nature the only way you could get a blue horse is if a line of horses already contain the gene for blue coat color. Genetic engineering is a radically new technology for changing the traits of organisms by substituting genetic material that has been altered outside of cells. This process allows scientists to rearrange and change genetic material before transfer and may one day lead to the transplanting of genes not found in nature but made in a laboratory. Through this altering of genes crops ca n be produced that are safer for the consumer. Transplanted genes develop crops th... ... impossible to confidently predict the effects of genetic manipulations because of the complexity and interconnectedness of living systems. (Fagan 1) We do have to be careful so herbicide resistance genes do not get transferred to weeds; or "super weeds" might be created which cannot be killed with traditional methods. We also have to make sure that only the genes that we want will be inserted so we do not insert bad traits with the bad (Sage 2). As you can see from these arguments from both sides, if we are going to be able to continue to feed the world we have to be able to keep producing more food on less land. The best way to do this is through genetically engineered crops. Works Cited http://www.biotechknowledge.com/showlib.php3?378#Pred (Monsanto) http://www.sage-intl.org/issues.html (Sage) http://www.maharishi.co.uk/fagan.htm (Fagan)