Respond to a student’s discussion post. The student’s post was based on a reading that i will provide with a link below. Your response should do more than simply agree/disagree with the original poster or parrot back what they said. Rather, you should expand on their points or apply them in a new way. This response must be at least 150 words.
The student’s discussion prompt:
Read the following Scientific American article on “designer babies”: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-era-of-designer-babies-may-be-based-on-overhyped-science/
This article raises several concerns about the work and claims of Orchid Biosciences. Describe at least two (2) of these. Be sure to tie the points raised by the article back into material we have discussed in class.
What is your opinion on the ethics of the process proposed by Orchid Biosciences? Do you feel there is a limit to what assisted reproductive technologies should do? While you are free to express whatever opinion you hold, make sure you include at least some information from our class discussions and/or the text to support your thoughts.
The student’s discussion post:
Claim 1: “Something that’s associated with a decreased risk of breast cancer could be associated with all other kinds of things, some of which might actually increase your risk of something else. We just don’t know enough yet.”
This claim is something that Peter craft said and, in my opinion, it is pointing out that the research is just not worth it right now with the output they are getting because, currently they don’t know the damage it could possibly be doing.
Claim 2: Her research examining polygenic risk scores suggests “they don’t transfer well to other populations that have been understudied.”
This is a claim that Alicia Martin stated throughout, and is firm behind and I can understand why. Just like most of the claims they are suggesting that the research is 1 under researched, and 2 could be harmful to other genes and people.
In my opinion I think research has a lot of unethical studies that do more harm than gain and I think this one is also one of those. There just is not enough research done on this one specific study to see if it really does benefit the population or at least the sample group. Not saying that eventually the study and the research won’t help in the future when there is more time and eyes watching it, but at this time I think the research is a little premature at least for now. I do think this research is something that could help find the single healthy gene but it would need the help to find the “correct” gene in my opinion before it moved onto the next step.
