Ethical, Legal and Social Issues

As time goes by since the 1970’s, DNA sequencing help society in the United States and in other countries, and since then it help cure diseases, explained many genes, predicting,curing and understanding many diseases, determine lifespan, determining our ancestry and many more. Many scientist used DNA sequencing to cure, understand and predict many diseases. At The Genome Institute, scientist are using powerful DNA sequencing to identify a patient’s tumor and finding a treatment. Scientist also discovered how long people and animals could live and how fast or how long our bodies age; you do this by isolating the gene sequence. By knowing the how long or how fast your body ages, you can do health benefitting activities or diet to increase your lifespan. In 1990-2001 U.S Human Genome Project, many scientist determined many sequences of base pairs that makes up human DNA and their objective was to find genes that causes diseases and find a treatment. DNA sequencing also could help determine your ancestry by doing DNA test. DNA sequencing was also used in Law Enforcement, in 1988, Colin Pitchfork was the first criminal to have his DNA to be a matched to a tissue sample of a crime.

Risk of DNA Sequencing technology: One of the risk is unknown long term effects on recombinant DNA in foods. Another risk is inserting foreign genes into a host could be harmful and have a fatal effect.

Benefits of DNA Sequencing Technology: DNA sequencing technology also give medical benefits for example it could produce insulin to aid people that have type 1 diabetes.DNA sequencing also give benefits for Agriculture. The Humane Genome project had 252 million acres of transgenic crops planted in 22 countries, and most of the plants genetically engineered to fight off insects, resistant to crop-destroying viruses and survive in harsh conditions.

Next and current generation DNA sequencing technology is being used all over the world. There are DNA date being shared across the world by a medical research project. There are over 60 institution across Asia, North America and Europe searching each patient’s medical; by doing this will help discover biological bases of cancer, inherited and infectious disease and drug effects. Inherited information of humans and other organism will help make technology that helps cure disease, hunger and promoting economic well beings.

The United States government claims that you have full ownership of your DNA and your reproductive rights, but private companies and universities have power on your DNA if they apply patent on your genes. There are many biotech companies and organization that are taking ownership of DNA. They also argued that “without intellectual property rights, there would be no (financial) incentive to validate genetic tests for diseases.” Do you really own your DNA? There’s articles saying that you only own 80% of your DNA and 20% are owned corporations and universities.

There are many legal issues in DNA sequencing. Genetic sequencing is an issue because it invades people's’ privacy; DNA reveals their characteristics, physical appearance and sensitive information. This is also an ethical issue because it discriminates their race or ethnic background. DNA analysis is also a legal issue. In 2002, in the Justice Department, the chief prosecutor rely on DNA samples on investigation and cases, so some of the innocent victims that were accused wrongly went to jail or faced the death penalty. People also use DNA analysis to manipulate their gene , choose the characteristic they want and pass it done to their child; this will cause conflict with religious belief.

DNA sequencing technology have many ethical issues like discrimination, manipulation, and religion. The knowledge of human genome could be used to discriminate other people. For Example, most people feared that health companies will refuse to provide insurance because of the individual’s gene. DNA can tell the individual ethnicity, and the likelihood of that person getting a disease There are also parents who manipulate their genes, to choose characteristics and physical appearance on their child, by doing this it also cause religious problem saying that it’s “not natural”.