Like all new technologies, genetic engineering can do wonders and it can also create horrors. Just like harnessing the atom led to wonderful advances in medicine and power generation, it also led to nuclear weapons. Genetically engineering animals and food crops can be very dangerous. For example, potatoes and corn have been engineered with insect tolerance by expressing cry genes from the bacteria bacillus thuringiensis. Now they SAY that's safe but does anyone know the long term effects on the human body of ingesting that for decades ?? In 2011, Chinese scientists generated dairy cows genetically engineered with genes for human beings to produce milk that would be the same as human breast milk.This could potentially benefit mothers who cannot produce breast milk but want their children to have breast milk rather than formula. Great but now those cows have HUMAN genes and wouldn't that make bovine diseases easier to cross over to humans ??
This is a complex issue because as the article states, crop yields can be increased as well as make them impervious to disease and insects. Yet, the long term effects on nature as well as humans are NOT known and this area of science needs to be very closely regulated.
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