Designer Babies Blog

Is technology getting out of are hands? Technology is developing everyday, which isn’t a bad thing, but now I think it’s getting out of control. “Designer Babies” is one of the technologically developed feature.

What are Designer Babies? Designer Babies have been presented as an advanced technology that can allow doctors and parents to alter embryos for genetic disorders. Basically they get to customize their own baby, but it isn’t in affect right now, but from knowing how fast technology grows, it has a chance of being highly used in the future. This is where the main question comes in. Is technology getting out of are hands?

People fear that later on in the future, parents and doctors will even have access to being able to choose babies characteristics using a genetic technology. “Designer Babies” is a term used by the media to describe this situation.

An ethical implication we should consider is:

Is the human modification technology safe? What kind of impact would this have on the society? Well technology is known to usually have side effects in someway. In this specific technology, there are a few safety concerns people should be aware about, such as:

This genetic modification technology may introduce genes to random places in the genome, which will end up disrupting the function of another gene. There has been trials made on mice, and there is evidence that, you would have an increasing sensitivity to pain.

"It's the ultimate shopping experience: designing your baby," says biotechnology critic Jeremy Rifkin, "In a society used to cosmetic surgery and psychopharmacology, this is not a big step."

This just shows proof that technology is going to go out of control in the future. Maybe there are some advantages you can benefit from, but there is a good chance that you will regret it in the future.

References:
http://www.bionetonline.org/English/Content/db_cont1.htm

http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/agar.html http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989987-1,00.htmlhttp://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/rjo0403l.jpg

Human Activites that have a negative impact on our Environment

Hunting, overfishing, habitat destructions, using pesticides are all examples of acts that have been ruining are environment. The extinction rates of species are only getting higher and higher every year. Humans have had a negative impact on biodiversity. With that said, what is Biodiversity? Biodiversity is the diversity of plants and animals in a given ecosystem.

The growing human population plays a big part in affecting the environment. Since they’re more people, there are more resources to meet each individuals needs.



It has been predicted that ten percent of the ecoregions in Canada are in risk of losing biodiversity because of habitat removal. Changing lands to agriculture might give you a loss of short grass prairie habitat. In some parts of Canada, most wetlands have been drained, which is a major threat to biodiversity because these habitats are rich in species.

Over Harvesting

Over harvesting has a great affect on biodiversity. Habitat loss often occurs as well. Removing an organism from its environment can have impacts on the environment. Humans have always shown incautious cares against plant and animal species. This exploitation can lead us to a predictable problem: species harvested from the wild can encourage more people to get involved in its extraction. Similar problems have been analysed by the fishing industry, and the logging industry. The results always end up exactly the same: population crashes, or at worst it can end in global extinction.



Three main problems of biological resource extraction are:

a) Too many people who want the resource
b) Lack of information about the ecology
c) Life-histories of populations being harvested

Plants and animals can’t handle sudden changes in temperature and climate. Climate has varied within short time. Right now we are in a period of high climatic unpredictably. What can this do to biodiversity?According to reports there has been evidence of increased UV, damaging agricultural crops, and organisms in wetlands. The effects differ, according to each specific vegetation zone.Examples:
Tundra Zone- Can possibly shrink with the increasing temperature.
Algae and aquatics can possibly disappear with the water getting warm.
Increasing water temperatures will hugely change ecology’s freshwater ecosystems and wetlands. Effects of global warming points to two major facts:
- Speed of change is much faster than in the past, which is a serious threat to slow-growing communities that aren’t able to respond as fast, which may shrink some plants that need cooler environments.
- Global warming can cause frequent climatic conflict such as fires, storms, etc.

Humans Activities and impacts on Biodiversity
Agriculture, forestry, and fishing are a few contributors to have a large impact on some areas.

Agriculture



Agriculture has huge effect on biodiversity because of its popularity over the landscape, mainly in the southern regions of Canada. Some effects are the habitat modification, pollution from pesticides and fertilizers.


Fishing

Fishing does not have a major impact but it can affect the aquatic zones through, nutrient add-ons, introduction of exotic fish, and pollution

Forestry

Forest does not play a major role either, but by cuttind down trees, and adding new soils can ruin the habitats for wildlife animals. By cutting down trees, it will take years to fully grow again.

Sources
http://www.nature.com/embor/journal/v8/n4/full/7400951.html
http://redpath-museum.mcgill.ca/Qbp/3.Conservation/impacts.htm#2.1.3
http://www.ecology.org/biod/population/human_pop1.html