Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Megachickens?! Selective Breeding Vs. Genetic Modifications

Many people are concerned about the capabilities of scientists and Breeders to make super strong animals and plants. There are Many concerns and benefits of Genetic Modifications and Selective breeding which I will adress in this blog

In selective breeding, they choose the animals that display the trait they are looking for. they then continually breed brackets of different animals having this trait until they naturally have a super animal. a concern of selective breeding is certainly the living conditions of these animals. They are often kept in very close quarters and only kept for their genetic traits. Benefits include more meat, more fruit and other such obvious benefits.

Genetic Modification is defined as the direct manipulation of an organism's genes. This means they modify the set of directions in an animal to make it non average comparatively to a normal one. Sometimes these are good for the animal such as resistance to disease. Concerns raised about Genetic Modification are the power scientists actually have and they could do so much that is ethically wrong.

A scientist born in 1822 named Gregor Mendel was the first to notice heredity by studying generations of peas and their color. He discovered the role each parent plays is different per case and led scientists in the future to discovering all of genetics. I believe he would think the modification to genes of animals was brilliant, but ethics would be questioned in some cases. I also didn't know him as a person I have only studied his scientific discoveries.

I believe that the most threatening of these two techniques is definitely Genetic Modification. This one concerns me the most because of the things they do not do but could easily do. The only reason they dont is because people would question their ethics. Something could also go terribly wrong with using science freely and destroy and raise havoc in the area of its creation. Genetic Modification is surely not the answers to all our problems and should be used with caution.
This is a selectively bred Belgian Blue Cow


This Rabbit has been genetically modified to make it glow in the dark using a gene from a jelly fish