Genethics

Urgent, News Flash

Panic ensues across the world as news breaks that the Human Genome has been mapped.  At the breakfast table, in classrooms, around the coffee pot in offices, from the corner bagel shop to the Capitol Building, people are talking about what this news really means.  Read some of the responses to the news as published in local and national news sources.

Genetic analysis can tell me if I am going to get cancer.

Medicines can be tailored to fit a particular person's disease.

Gene-therapy can "cure" a person of a disorder.

Clone my daughter who was killed in an accident last year!

My husband and I are sterile, can cloning help us?

I want to use tissue from my late son as a source of future organ transplants for my family.

I want to use cloning to produce new kidneys for my son.

Cloning will stop the course of human evolution

 

Genetic Engineering is a risky experiment that may have vast environmental repercussions.

Genetic Engineering will feed the world's poor.

Genetically Engineered foods have serious health risks like allergic reactions, toxins harmful to human health, antibiotic resistance.

Genetically Engineered foods will cause the growth of "super weeds" and "super bugs".

Cloning will produce generically superior human beings.

We can "bring back" extinct organisms and save others from becoming extinct.

I want to choose the eye color of my baby.

Genethics Begins . . .

Created for the Fermilab LInC program sponsored by Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Education Office and Friends of Fermilab, and funded by United States Department of Energy, Illinois State Board of Education, North Central Regional Technology in Education Consortium which is operated by North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL), and the National Science Foundation.

Author(s): Kimberly Noethen (knoethen@pinecrest.edu)
School: Pine Crest School, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida 
Created: February 15, 2001 - Updated: April 18, 2001
URL: /lincon/w01/projects/genethicskim/student1.html