Ethical Research In Science And Social Science: Advantages And Disadvantages Of Genetic Engineering

Choose one of the two options below to write up an assay for conducting ethical research in science or social science study. Please select ONE option ONLY. 

Research ethics is generally the process that systematically gives justifiable evidence and clarity with maintaining a balance to actions taken while conducting the specific research. All these is based on ethical principles, values and beliefs of the research team. The ethical considerations in a research takes into consideration the guidelines in the research while making decisions that affect any group of people or individual taking part in the research (Department of Health, 2014). The main purpose of this research is to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of genetic engineering or the pros and cons based on various trials done in cloning, safety risks and any other ethical issues that may arise in genetic engineering. The pros and cons in these effect are too much to ignore.

Genetic engineering or modification has become important in manufacturing of drugs, gene therapy and creating model animals that mimic human conditions. It has become an important process in medicine in enhancing a cell component with one of the earliest uses of GM being human mass production of insulin in bacteria. This has keenly been applied to human hormones in vaccines, follicle stimulating hormones as well as monoclonal antibodies. While considering the economic conditions, diseases can become a huge burden in health care system. Without proper treatment, diseases can become a huge burden to families due to financial demands .(Deterding, Canossa, Harteveld, Cooper, Nacke, and Whitson, 2015).  This research will test the importance of genetic modification in improving a cell which is useful in treating major ailments. The research applied will be qualitative research methods. It will also focus partially on experimental and correlational ability focusing on observation and field experiment.

The research purpose is to identify the safety and efficacy of genetic modification in enhancing the quality of a cell. Also , in the report, the ethical consideration will focus on areas of crucial delicate nature and are supposed to be justified. Application of methods and prospects for the development of genetic engineering in food production.

Now they can already synthesize genes, and with the help of such synthesized genes introduced into bacteria, a number of substances, in particular hormones and interferon, are obtained. Their production constituted an important branch of biotechnology (Dingwall, Iphofen,., Lewis, Oates, and Emmerich, 2017). So, in 1980, growth hormone - somatotropin - was obtained from Escherichia coli bacteria. Before the development of genetic engineering, it was isolated from the pituitary from corpses. Somatotropin, synthesized in specially designed bacterial cells, has obvious advantages: it is available in large quantities,

Research Purpose and Expected Results

Despite the obvious benefits of genetic research and experimentation, the very concept of “genetic engineering” has generated various suspicions and fears, has become a subject of concern and even political disputes. Many fear, for example, that some virus that causes cancer in humans will be introduced into a bacterium, usually living in the body or on a person’s skin, and then this bacterium will cause cancer. It is also possible that the plasmid carrying the drug resistance gene will be introduced into pneumococcus, as a result of which the pneumococcus will become resistant to antibiotics and the pneumonia will not be treatable. This kind of danger certainly exists. Genetic engineering has presented a unique challenge to humanity. What does genetic engineering bring us, happiness or trouble? About the possible danger of genetically modified products for human health is already blowing the whole world. There is no unambiguous and unanimous opinion of scientists on this issue.

In others, a strict requirement was made to label genetically modified food, which, of course, was very disliked by suppliers.. Animals developed a whole range of serious changes in the gastrointestinal tract, liver, goiter, and spleen (Hu, and Xiong,2014). Probably, this year the permission for its industrial production will be received. However, scientists do not intend to stop the resurrection of animals. If it is possible to resurrect them, then the same can be done with people. The development of science gives us the potential for both the bad and the good. Therefore, it is important that we make the right choice. The main difficulty is of a political nature - this is the solution to the question of who "we" are in this sentence. If this question is left to the mercy of market forces, the long-term interests of the environment are likely to suffer. But this can be said about many other aspects of life. One of the main directions in which the technologies of genetic engineering are applied is agriculture.

Every research has one or more limitations. A larger part of research concern is shown in the ethical field of the research. The various ethical issues that arise from the research may include;

• Safety
• Utility
• Accuracy
• Confidentiality
• Propriety
• Transparency
• Feasibility
• Harm minimization
• Justifiability
• Implementation
• Fair balance of harms and benefits
• Reciprocity

A classic method of improving the quality of agricultural products is selection - a process in which, by artificial selection, individual plants or animals with certain properties are distinguished and crossed for the hereditary transmission of these properties and their enhancement. This process is quite long and not always truly effective. Genetic engineering has the ability to provide some kind of living organism with properties uncharacteristic of it, to enhance the manifestation of some existing properties or eliminate them. This is due to the introduction of new or exclusion of old genes from the DNA of the organism. For example, this is how a special potato variety resistant to the Colorado potato beetle was bred. The use of genetic engineering to change the properties of plants, as a rule, is done just to increase their resistance to pests, unfavorable environmental conditions, improve their taste and growth qualities. Intervention in the genome of animals is used to accelerate their growth and increase productivity (Glesne, 2015).

Pros and Cons of the Research

Products of agriculture thus also artificially increase the amount of essential amino acids and vitamins, as well as their nutritional value. It is believed that in the context of the constant growth of the planet’s population, only genetically modified products will be able to save the world from starvation in the future, allowing them to grow food high quality, with a high content of vitamins, etc. However, there is an opposite opinion, which stands for the fact that genetically modified products may be unsafe for human health. To clarify the safety issues of such products, special international commissions have been created, which at the present time agree that genetically modified products do not pose a threat to human health. In the vast majority of countries in the world, the use of genetically modified products is permitted or not urgent (Nødvig, Nielsen, Kogle, and Mortensen, 2015).

To predict the long-term effects that may occur as a result of the consumption of genetically modified products is currently impossible at all. Relatively calm about GM - products (genetically modified) - in the United States, where about 80 percent of all genetic crops are grown today. Europe, on the other hand, treats this extreme negatively. Under the onslaught of the public and consumer organizations that want to know what they eat, in some countries a moratorium on the importation of such products has been introduced (Austria, France

The number of arguments for the use of the GMF far exceeds the possible arguments against. Thus, supporters of the GMF refer in particular to the high level of quality control of all genetically modified products (GMF). Over the twenty-year history of using these products in different countries of the world, not a single fact of their negative impact on human health has been identified, which cannot be said of traditional agricultural products, which inevitably use various kinds of fertilizers, many of which are recognized as harmful to humans. Moreover, a selection that has been used in agriculture for centuries, in essence, pursues the same genetic modification of organisms, only does this for a much longer period of time (Harriss, and Atkinson, 2015). Genetic engineering is simply capable of introducing the necessary changes into the body in a short time, and therefore the use of the GMF is no more dangerous than the use of any other products derived by the method of classical selection. Horizontal gene transfer (such that the body transfers its genetic material to another organism that is not its descendant), is quite common in nature. This suggests that the genetic modification of organisms is not unnatural. The final argument in favor of genetic modification of organisms in agriculture is the technical methods of protection against hybridization of organisms, i.e. from combining the genetic material of different cells in one (Quinlan, Babin, Carr, and Griffin, 2019). Opponents of the use of genetic engineering in agriculture appeal to the lack of safety studies of the GMF (however, this issue is constantly being investigated), as well as to the fact that GMOs sometimes cause the disappearance of certain species (Rezania and Xu, Lifescan 2014).

Ethical Issues, Integrity and Safety Issues and Risks

For example, wild genetically modified organisms can force out populations of wild species due to their greater adaptability to adverse environmental conditions. GMOs can also form hybrids with wild organisms, spreading artificially introduced genes in nature.

Major adaptation in response to ethical issues include

• Beneficence
• Non- maleficence
• Justice
• Respect for each other

Beneficence can be defined as taking into consideration the risks and harms associated with the research. Currently, there are a number of projects aimed at developing ways to limit the spread of transgenes in wild populations. Genetically modified organisms are also used in science when conducting various kinds of research. Thus, the laws governing the development of certain diseases, the processes of aging and regeneration are investigated, the functioning of the nervous system is studied, and a number of other topical problems of biology and medicine are solved (Tikly, and Bond, 2018).. Obtaining human insulin can be considered one of the achievements of GMOs in medicine. As you know, insulin, previously obtained only from the blood of animals, had a negative impact on health, although many people with diabetes cannot do without it. Human insulin produced by genetically modified bacteria is safer. No maleficence can be maintained by non-engagement in intentional harm to a person. Respect for persons is also a major factor in.  Also, on the basis of milk of genetically modified goats, a drug is made for the prevention and treatment of thrombosis (Vyas, Barrasa, and Fink, 2015). Now scientists are conducting research aimed at obtaining a special type of protein from genetically modified plants that can deprive the human immunodeficiency virus of virulence, i.e. to prevent its spread, and subsequently to conduct AIDS prevention. In modern medicine, gene therapy is used to treat various diseases - the process of making changes in the genetic apparatus of human cells. So the cloning of a person or animal is definitely not able to repeat consciousness. The cloned individual will not be endowed with the mind of the original organism, he will need upbringing, education, etc. Moreover, the issue of the complete external identity of a clone is also controversial. As a rule, a clone is not a complete copy of the original, since during cloning, only the genotype is copied, which does not mean an unambiguous repetition of the phenotype of the organism (Walliman, 2017)

Conclusion

Such human cloning is faced with even greater ethical, religious, and legal issues than therapeutic. In principle, there is no definite opinion of the public on this score, exactly as the world's largest religions are not able to give an unequivocal assessment of this phenomenon, because it is beyond the scope of their classical teachings, and therefore requires argumentation. There are also some legal difficulties, such as questions of paternity, motherhood, inheritance, marriage, and some others (Zimmer and Proferes, 2014). The development of cloning is also unsafe for reasons of control over it, as well as the possible leakage of technology into the criminal and terrorist circles. Of particular concern is the high percentage of failures in cloning, which is the danger of the appearance of people-freaks. Genetic engineering is one of the most actively developing and promising technologies of our time, which in the future will be able to solve many medical issues and not only.

References

Department of Health, E., 2014. The Belmont Report. Ethical principles and guidelines for the protection of human subjects of research. The Journal of the American College of Dentists, 81(3), p.4.

Deterding, S., Canossa, A., Harteveld, C., Cooper, S., Nacke, L.E. and Whitson, J.R., 2015, April. Gamifying research: Strategies, opportunities, challenges, ethics. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 2421-2424). ACM.

Dingwall, R., Iphofen, R., Lewis, J., Oates, J. and Emmerich, N., 2017. Towards common principles for social science research ethics: A discussion document for the Academy of Social Sciences. In Finding common ground: Consensus in research ethics across the social sciences (pp. 111-123). Emerald Publishing Limited.

Glesne, C., 2015. Becoming qualitative researchers: An introduction. Pearson.

Harriss, D.J. and Atkinson, G., 2015. Ethical standards in sport and exercise science research: 2016 update. Int J Sports Med, 36(14), pp.1121-1124.

Hu, H. and Xiong, L., 2014. Genetic engineering and breeding of drought-resistant crops. Annual review of plant biology, 65, pp.715-741.

Nødvig, C.S., Nielsen, J.B., Kogle, M.E. and Mortensen, U.H., 2015. A CRISPR-Cas9 system for genetic engineering of filamentous fungi. PLoS One, 10(7), p.e0133085.

Quinlan, C., Babin, B., Carr, J. and Griffin, M., 2019. Business research methods. South Western Cengage.

Rezania, A. and Xu, J., Lifescan Inc, 2014. Differentiation of pluripotent stem cells to definitive endoderm lineage. U.S. Patent 8,741,643.

Tikly, L. and Bond, T., 2018. Towards a postcolonial research ethics in comparative and international education. In Researching Ethically across Cultures (pp. 18-38). Routledge.

Vyas, V.K., Barrasa, M.I. and Fink, G.R., 2015. A Candida albicans CRISPR system permits genetic engineering of essential genes and gene families. Science advances, 1(3), p.e1500248.

Walliman, N., 2017. Research methods: The basics. Routledge.

Zimmer, M. and Proferes, N.J., 2014. A topology of Twitter research: disciplines, methods, and ethics. Aslib Journal of Information Management, 66(3), pp.250-261.