Coming of the Biotech Age
There are a number of people who would consider the technological and computer revolutions to be the greatest achievements of our time. But, will the near future for computers have continued impact on society? Society has marvelled at the current functions of computers from managing business accounts to connecting to the other side of the world with the Internet. The revolution was not always seen this way. Society felt that the quick change to a touch-button lifestyle might cause such pessimistic outcomes like sloth behaviour and impatience to slow machines. However, despite the critics and their daunting criticism, the computer has done quite well in our society. A similar revolutionary industry is currently brewing; the biotechnology movement. Most people consider the possible outcomes in biotechnology with the same pessimism as they did the coming of the computer age. Biotech currently drudges in the infancy stage of growth that computers once experienced in the 1970's. The history of both industries followed corresponding turns but have grown at different rates. What will become of each industry still remains to be seen. The future of both fields could see the end of further productivity and innovation. As the world sta
Today, biotechnology is becoming a major part of our lives. This industry has created various ways to clone plants thus spending less money for production and still increasing crop yields. DNA recombining technology is as simple as it sounds. This technique is designed to place DNA of one species into the DNA of another species. Where could this be of any use? This is essential to incorporate important DNA traits into species, which are beneficial to them and eventually us. Some plants receive genes (DNA segments) that gives resistance to pesticide. Therefore, when pesticide is used to eliminate insects that spoil the crops, it will have no effect on the plants. Despite certain techniques that are employed to help humanity, many failures have come at the price of human lives. For instance, the famous Tammy Fae baby, born with a defective heart in 1982, had the heart of a baboon transplanted into her. Nevertheless, she died after twenty days. This is an example of the trials and errors that looms in the future for this industry. For example, when the DNA gene for dystrophin was transferred to viruses to carry the correct gene for muscular dystrophy sufferers, the injections were administered to mice. The muscles that should have collapsed due to this illness were regenerated. The scientists were astonished and performed the same injections to ailing victims and the viruses started to infect the cells with the correct gene, however, the human body has a more complex immune system than the common mouse and thus the viruses were destroyed. Some patients even died from this injection. Stories like this may not be as severe in today's computer industry but computers have had their own share of downfalls with hackers and new laws to deal with the annual 10 billion dollars in computer crimes such as fraud. The contrasting negative aspects of both industries show that biotech is striving for the sake of humanity and the deaths that occur for its purpose are more justifiable than co
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Approximate Word count = 1339
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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