Science and Society: The Influence of Genetics on Human Life and Society

The genetic revolution in biology we are experiencing today began early in the last century as biologists noted that dead bacteria could be resurrected by a “transforming principle.” The structure of the transforming principle was determined to be DNA. In the middle of the last century, within two decades after that discovery, a form of DNA called genes was inserted into bacteria and animals using viruses and pieces of DNA from bacteria. Soon after those advances, most of our food crops were genetically altered to resist weed killers, helping farmers to feed the world. 

DNA sequencing is telling us more about our ancestors, with a recent discovery showing that the DNA from English people recovered from ancient bones in England reveals that the English heritage is Germanic, adding more irony to the horror of the Second World War as Germans were unknowingly killing their own people to promote ethnic cleansing. In contrast, DNA sequence analysis has helped South American families reunite this century as family members were separated by the kidnapping of children during wars in two countries in the last century.

In this century, genetic techniques are being used to bring sight to the blind and defeat life-threatening illnesses, like sickle cell disease. Recently, embryos were genetically altered to resist the HIV infection that plagued their parents. However, the medical researcher was condemned for not observing an international ban on such procedures. The genetic revolution does not stop there as new, successful techniques for fighting cancer have been developed and more are being planned. Genetic testing is helping to detect the genes involved in Alzheimer’s, with the hope that this debilitating illness will be eliminated from the human population. Genetic techniques are now used to grow fish on land, raise cattle in extreme environments, and harvest organs from pigs to save human lives.

However, a persistent question remains: how far do we go with these advancements? How much do we alter ourselves and the rest of nature? For instance, a wealthy investor is raising money to resurrect extinct animals, like the woolly mammoth, to battle global warming, but what are the costs and consequences to humans and their environment? In this text, we examine these advances in biology and genetics using a Christian worldview, which declares that all life is sacred but also shows that healing through medicine and science is not something to be feared, but harnessed to promote the sanctity of life.