Risks Involved with The Human Genome Project Essay -- Argumentative Pe

Risks Involved with The Human Genome Project The man in the black suit solemnly steps out of the car. His wife scrambles to catch up with his swift pace. She offers an encouraging tone or two, but the man doesn’t listen. He plunges through the brass, a genetically altered combination of the common bush and grass species, both eyes set on his house. The next-door neighbors dash over to interrogate the deserted wife. The neighbors appear instantaneously in hot pink, plastic body suits, with tanks of oxygen attached to their backs. (This elaborate outfit, for those who may not know, is a common protection against identity impersonation. The decoding of the human genome inadvertently supplies criminals with an ideal method to steal another person’s identity; identity thieves need only a single cell from a person to detect everything about him or her. Body suits, in addition to setting a fashionable trend, safe-guard against this possibility by trapping all cells within the suit itself.) The wife struggles to suppress a deluge of tears as she warmly hugs her plastic encased neighbors. She briefly relates the day’s events. Her husband lost the court case. He was accused of harboring the gene for prostate cancer, and after a simple genetic test, the accusation was confirmed. Her husband had twenty-four hours to move into a quarantined house, located in an abandoned section of the city. He would live there indefinitely with other potential prostate cancer victims. By isolating all people predisposed to prostate cancer, officials hope to eliminate prostate cancer from the gene pool. The wife is purely devastated that reality is manifesting itself so harshly in her life. The neighbors attempt to console her, but they are quite reli... ...tter than another. It can be difficult to discern where exactly the comparisons should cease. The Human Genome Project deserves to have a few cautious skeptics. A breakthrough of this magnitude needs to be carefully examined before assimilated into our culture. Yet, at the same time, this breakthrough has become the very epitome of engineering feats for mankind. My mixed feelings parallel an exemplary quote from The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist by Richard Feynman. â€Å"Trying to understand the way nature works involves a most terrible test of human reasoning ability. It involves subtle trickery, beautiful tight ropes of logic on which one has to walk, in order not to make a mistake in predicting what will happen† (15). Work Cited Feynman, Richard P. The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist. Reading: Perseus Books, 1998.