Genetic Engineering: Restraining Human Powers

Abstract

"No one can say that genetic engineering (or recombinant DNA teclmology) is a part of the ecological crisis-yet. But this revolutionary power has the potential to become a serious ecological problem in coming decades. Genetic engineering is the extraordinary scientific capacity to manipulate and modify the genetic constitution of cells and organisms, even to the point of cloning multiple copies of revised organisms and crossing the reproductive barriers among species. Some suggest that genetic engineering is not new in principle; its forerunners include selective breeding in domestic animals and plant hybridixation. Yet. its methods and its results-especially cloned genes and transspecies hybrids-seem to be not merely extensions of its forerunners but also qualitative differences. If so. the moral issues may also be distinctive."