Human Genetic Engineering Pros and Cons List

The human body is far from a perfect specimen. As such, scientists are constantly seeking new and inventive ways to help us overcome ailments that naturally occur during a normal person’s life span. People often have genetic faults that are difficult to overcome and human genetic engineering aims to eradicate those issues before they have a chance to keep a person from reaching their true potential.

While this may seem too good to be true, there are certain disadvantages that must also be explored. Read on to learn more about how human genetic engineering can help us and hinder us at the same time.

List of Pros of Human Genetic Engineering

1. Eliminating Diseases
Disease is one of the leading causes of death on our planet and it does not discriminate, wiping out young and old alike. This is because our genomes need serious work. By using human genetic engineering, we can eliminate the genetic mutations that cause a variety of diseases, this ensuring a much greater quality of living.

2. Longer Lives
By getting rid of diseases, you also get rid of shorter life spans. Instead of succumbing to disease, a person can live longer and perish due to natural causes. With human genetic engineering, living to be 100 years old could cease to be noteworthy and instead become a normal human life span.

3. Increase In Pharmaceutical Effectiveness
Working on human genetic engineering allows scientists to learn more about effective treatments, which leads to beautiful pharmaceutical products for the consumer. The more scientists learn about genetic mutations, the better their chances of designing drugs that can effectively treat them.

List of Cons of Human Genetic Engineering

1. Safety Concerns
Adding genes to the human body comes with a great deal of inherent risks. Gene therapy is not a process without danger and there are patients who have died during experiments. We do not currently possess the knowledge necessary to completely decipher the risks and avoid them.

2. Long Term Effects Are Not Clear
Since human genetic engineering is currently in the earliest of stages, it is quite difficult to ascertain what the long term effects will be. Altering genes can eliminate one problem, while causing an unforeseen issue to take place elsewhere in the body. The body is a complex maze and making drastic genetic changes in one region leads to additional complications.

3. Limited Diversity Of Genetics
If scientists are successfully able to alter our overall genetic structure, this will lead to a significant decrease in our overall diversity. If the overall human gene pool becomes more shallow, this could leave us at serious risk of being wiped out completely by disease threats that are not currently known.