Current & Emerging Issues In Genetics

Current & Emerging Issues In Genetics

Please: read all of this closely. My school likes to be very precise.

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Background Information - In the final two decades of the 20th Century the scientific community experienced significant breakthroughs in the understanding of the science of genetics. This knowledge combined with the creative thought and inspiration of many researchers saw the world enter the 21st Century with a seemingly ever increasing potential to make the world a better place ... or maybe not? ...

In the course so far and with wider reading you will have become aware of a plethora of 'issues' relating to current and emerging issues in genetics. Just some of these are:

- Selective breeding - eg the reason that none of the food (plants or animals) we eat today looks like it originally did in the wild. This is assisted by, or in some situations replace by, genetic engineering of food.
- Transgenics - eg rabbits that glow in the dark due to jellyfish genes in their Dna
- GM - (genetically modified) foods
- Stem cells - where they are obtained and what they are used for, etc
- Cloning
- Xenotransplantation eg human tissues grown in other animals and the organs of other animals transplanted into humans
- Regeneration - eg mammals regrowing lost limbs with the help of genetics?
- Tissue Engineering - eg growing human tissue (eg skin) or whole organs (eg liver) or body parts (eg nose) in the laboratory

Many of the above topics may provide solutions to current world problems yet some may create far more! What if we could quickly and successfully conquer all diseases? What if we could provide enough food to solve world hunger, or if we could solve infertility problems or find a technique for immortality? What then about over-population? World economics? What about 'Animal Rights' where testing is performed on animals?

One of the biggest difficulties with any rapid development in science is governments' inability...