L'avancée technologique (en anglais)

IDEA OF PROGRESS


The Idea of Progress is the theory that the different advances in technology, science, and social organization can produce an improvement in the human condition. That is, people can become happier in terms of quality of life (social progress) through economic development (modernization), and the application of science and technology (scientific progress). I chose to talk about the medical progress and more exactly about « Designer Baby ». The term is coined by the média and journalist which refer to a baby whose genetic makeup has been artificially selected by genetic engineering combined which in vitro fertilisation to ensure the presence or absence of particular genes or characteristics.

Now, I propose we look at a question : « Should we fear progress ? »

The progress which can save life

Take the example of Molly, she is a teenager was born with a rare illness from which she was destined to die before the age of 7. She was cured in 2000 thanks to a bone marrow transplant from her brother Adam. People must have been quite appalled at Adam’s birth since he was a medicine baby whose purpose was to save his sister. Her story is significant because she was the first child to be cure thanks to PGD ( pré-implantation genetic diagnosis ). It showed that such an innovative scientific breakthrough can improve life expectancy and have outstanding result when it comes healing severe disease.

Even if this medical progress is wonderful this can save so many life, it can be a problem for ethical reasons or be used by the wrong way…

The fiction becomes real

Many writers have imagined a future with genetic manipulation. Like Aldous Huxley’s novel “Brave new world” in 1931 about Human Cloning. In the book "Brave New World", babies are made in tubes with the Bokanovsky’s Progress. The goal of the process is to produce identical human beings belonging to the lower class of the society. They are mass-produced just like cars on an assembly line. They don’t have feeling, they are created to perform a specific task and they don’t revolt, they never critics the system. The society described by Huxley us a dehumanized and a totalitarian society in which an elite rules over the lower classes. Usually the aim of the research it’s to improve the lot of people here it is the opposite.

The aim of Huxley was certainly to denounce the mistakes, the danger of medical and technical progress. The novel anticipated in vitro fertilisation and the cloning of Dolly the sheep in 1997, the first animal to be cloned from an adult cell.

The danger of genetic manipulation is that people can search perfection for their children like choosing their physical characteristics before their birth and all the babies are alike and the society will be sterilized. There will be no natural selection.

To my mind genetic manipulation is dangerous if it is not used for medicine and to save life. If it’s just aesthetic I think it is sad because we need diversity for make a perfect world. The world is your oyster.

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