Genetic Engineering: There is No Genetic Definition of Humanity Essay

With advances in genetics and the decryption of the human genome, near(prenominal) community are taking the time to sit back and excogitate the questions of what homo is and where it comes from.1 Will techniques such as gene therapy razetually realise people who arent quite human? If humanity is a flexible and dynamic concept, then how do people know if they are human? Does some standard measure of humanity countm likely in our future, and is it even ethically proper to impose such a standard? school of thought offers the most satisfying definition of humanity a human mortal is a conscious individual who interacts with an outside world. The details of the various philosophical debates on the exact nature of someonehood would be enough to fill a library, but the main ideas can be summarized as follows a person is self-aware, having the ability to think about thinking. Nothing in this definition of humanity involves matters of genetics or quantitative analyses of specific t raits, which makes this definition applicable to people who may not be human in the way perception tries to define the term. Defining humanity in a scientific sense, however, is a nettled endeavor. Many strictly human traits can be pitch in animals. Wolves have a complex social structure. Bonobos, a backwash of chimpanzee, can learn an abstract symbol-language and show the ability to understand grammar and syntax.2 In other experiments dolphins-who are genetically more distant from humans than bonobos-learned a type of sign language showing that they, too, are able to taste complex rules of language.3 One only has to yell at the family dog to see that animals can express emotion and empathy. What, then, is left to humans? Many shoot down to our advanced technology as proof... ...1. This paper was originally written for the course, pitying Genetics, Society, and Ethics, held at Washington College, Chestertown, Maryland. 2. Robert A. Baron, Psychology fifth ed. (Boston Allyn an d Bacon, 2000). 3. Baron. 4. N. A. Campbell, J. B. Reece, and L. G. Mitchell, Biology 5th ed., (New York Addison Wesley Longman, 1999). 5. plane Ridley, Genome The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters (New York HarperCollins Publishers, 1999) 24. 6. Ibid. 7. Baron. 8. Ridley, 24. 9. Ibid. 10. Campbell et al., 446. BibliographyBaron, Robert. A. Psychology. 5th ed. Boston Allyn and Bacon, 2000. Campbell, N. A., J. B. Reece, and L. G. Mitchell. Biology. 5th ed. New York Addison Wesley Longman, 1999. Ridley, Matt. Genome The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters. New York HarperCollins Publishers, 1999.