Genetic Corp X is one of the world's premier tissue and organ cloning centers. Medical breakthroughs of all kinds have originated from the work done at the facility. Zarra Perez was their lead research scientist on her way to curing Alzheimer's disease--until a nearly fatal accident left her with no personal memories or sense of self. Her father and husband want her to return to the life they say she had before her accident. However, even with no sense of personal identity, Zarra isn't content to allow others to dictate her life while she waits on her memories to come back. In her desperate search to remember show she is, Zarra uncovers the horrible truth about Genetic Corp X. Now she is faced with a moral dilemma that could result in her own
1. List whether the student was positive or negative for each characteristic and include whether the characteristic is dominant or recessive. (6 points)
Calculate the ratios of the genotypes and phenotypes of the offspring in the F1 generation.
Henrietta Lacks, a woman whose cells have made millions of dollars, but most people don’t know her name, or her story. “She’s usually identified as Helen Lane, but often she has no name at all. She’s simply called HeLa, the code name given to the world’s first immortal human cells – her cells cut from her cervix just months before she died. Her real name is Henrietta Lacks,” (Skloot 1). Through the last few months of her life, she had major struggles with hospitals and scientists. Henrietta was in serious pain throughout the last few months, and the doctor treated her as a specimen. “Henrietta is still a miserable specimen,” (Skloot 66). Another major flaw in Henrietta story is the fact that her family was barely told of her condition of cervical
Rebecca Skloot, a science writer has always been obsessed with the name Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta Lacks was an African American women whose cancer cells were removed and used for scientific experimentation. Many doctors believed that cells were not immortal, until they found Henrietta’s. People did not know much information about Henrietta and her family, and so Skloot wants to tell her story. Throughout her research, she does not realize how much backstory, and emotional baggages exists until she contacts the family, and begins to connect with them. The family members are keen about the idea of opening up to people about Henrietta. They believe that reporters will just keep on taking advantage of them. With this, Skloot realizes that the
People easily view themselves as the main character of their story. We experience our lives from the first person perspective, our own perspective. We are the center of every single one of our experiences. But what about everyone else? After all, we cannot be the main characters of every life story. We think very little if at all about what sort of life the barista serving us coffee has, or the daily woes that plague a fast food worker serving us burgers at a drive-through. We have a tendency to view others as functions of how they benefit us. Rebecca Skloot’s nonfiction novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a vivid illustration of this spirit of abstraction. The scientific community and the national media used Henrietta and her family as a commodity, exploiting them for their own benefit, forgetting that behind the cancer cells they took, lies a human being. This abuse was caused by an irresponsible sense of altruistic authority, journalistic encroachment and the phenomenon of groupthink.
Life extensions are critically dependent on futuristic medical advancements. However, a strong noble compass is needed to ensure scientific advancements do not cross moral ethics of life. Brave New World, written by Aldous Huxley, and the movie Gattaca, directed by Andrew Niccol, propose technologically advanced societies that challenge ethical and moral views. Although Brave New World and Gattaca relate in genetic discrimination, they differ in technology’s powers and limits, as well as the resiliency of the human spirit.
The science fiction cinematic piece Gattaca by Andrew Niccol was released in 1997. It addresses the moral and ethical concepts regarding genetic engineering and the social order strives in the pursuit of biological perfection. The idea of perfection and genetic engineering is portrayed with a dystopian world were genetic discrimination is the foundation for society that takes place in “the not so distant future”. To address these ideas Niccol, uses archetypal characters such as Vincent as the underdog and Eugene as the supporting character to convey the psychological challenges and boundaries that have an effect on how the characters live their lives and interact within the world they live in. The films idea of genetic engineering causes the viewer to consider the ethicality of such technology and how its superiority can result in a world were individuals are bound by social restrictions and discrimination due to the presence of a scientifically engineered race of human beings.
The novel Never Let Me Go, written by Kazuo Ishiguro, is set in a capitalistic, dystopian society in which scientific advancements have greatly relieved society of their medical concerns, all the while, severely damaged their integrity. The exploitation of human clones for the sole purpose of implementing a sufficient number of organs for society has resulted in a change in their ethics, as well as their ego. In Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go, Ishiguro uses characters to illuminate corruption in society, illustrating that greed in the pursuit of progress can negatively alter the mindset of society. By living in a capitalistic environment, one will develop a fatalist mentality in an attempt to come to terms with society and their
The film GATTACA and the short story, “Nine Lives,” exemplifies the ethics of altering human life at the genetic level, through techniques of genetic engineering. Throughout GATTACA, the ability to create improved, even superior forms of human life as a positive development through eugenics is shown as well as arousing questions about the moral implications of such engineering. The main protagonist in GATTACA, Vincent Freeman, battles with the discrimination of being an “invalid” in a world of “valids” and comes to realize that he is not an inferior being in the midst of an altered humanity. In “Nine Lives,” a lone survivor of the ten genetically engineered clones of John Chow struggle come to understand itself in relation to unaltered humanity and its individuality for the first time in its life. A dystopian society is produced when unaltered humans and genetically engineered beings coexist and interact with one another due to nefarious social practices such filtering menial jobs only to “invalids” in GATTACA and the emphasis in the value of clones and their worth to society as collective work group rather than focusing on each individual’s contribution to society. The film GATTACA exhibits the adverse nature of eugenics while “Nine Lives” stresses the importance of individualism instead of collectivism and fend off the need to be reliant on others to feel welcomed in society.
During the course of history, there have been many scientific achievements. The discovery of electricity, landing on the moon, and the creation of the internet. The amount of achievements that have been accounted for throughout the course of history is uncanny. However, as technology advances throughout the course of history, the scientific achievements start to seem fictional. One example of this is genetic engineering, to be able to alter DNA in order to create something that is unnatural. Scientists have been able to use the genetic engineering that is done on plants and manipulate it to alter the DNA of both humans and animals. By doing this, scientists are now able to create embryos that can have certain qualities that they within individual.
Just as most bioethicists and medical professionals agree that genetic testing for curable or preventable diseases is beneficial to patients, they also agree that genetic testing for incurable and untreatable diseases, such as Alzheimer's, is useless (Hubbard & Wald, 1999; Ridley, 1999). Although a negative test may afford a person the reassurance that he or she will not develop the disease, a positive test could be a death sentence. For example, since 1986 people who are at risk for Huntington's disease have had the option of being tested for the mutation on chromosome 4 that is linked to the disease (Ridley, 1999). In Genome, Nancy Wexler, a woman who set out to identify the Huntington's gene in the late 1970s, relates the story of a woman who asked doctors whether or not she had Huntington's disease (Ridley, 1999). Although the doctors found that the woman was showing subtle signs of the disease, she could not detect these signs herself. The doctors, rather than telling the woman that she had the disease, let her believe that she was well and did not have Huntington's disease. After the woman left the doctors' office, the woman's friend came into the office and asked the doctors what they had said to the woman, because earlier the woman had told her friend that she
Genetic profiling is a contemporary issue relating to the individual and technology which restricts access to unbiased decisions and privacy. Genetic profiling interferes with the individuals bodily, genetic and behavioural privacy, as it can be used for the benefit of identifying bodies to using the results of a DNA test to choose whether to employ one individual over another, due to future concerns. It can easily be argued that genetic profiling is in the need of law reform as a result of legal implications and the lack of individual’s rights.
In the past three decades, scientists have learned how to mix and match characteristics among unrelated creatures by moving genes from one creature to another. This is called “genetic engineering.” Genetic Engineering is prematurely applied to food production. There are estimates that food output must increase by 60 percent over the next 25 years to keep up with demand. Thus, the result of scientist genetically altering plants for more consumption. The two most common methods for gene transfer are biological and electromechanical. “Early experiments all involved changing DNA using bacterial vectors”(Randerson, 2001). Through other advances scientists proclaim how they can improve the human gene pool. All humans have
The issue of bioethics has become so prevalent it has also arisen in popular culture. The best example of this being the movie Repo! The Genetic Opera¸ which takes place in the future, years after an epidemic of organ failure wreaked havoc on the population of man. During this time a “savior” arose in the form of Rotti Largo who developed the Bio-Tech Company GeneCo. GeneCo
Throughout the 20th century, there have been many wonderful authors. But there is one author that has written many great books that lots of people still read today. His name is Roald Dahl. Roald Dahl is a famous children’s book author. He has written many fantastic children’s books such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and Matilda. I believe that Roald Dahl is one of the best children’s book authors because he has lots of creativity and inspiration for his stories.