What are the ethical issues with the following? : (a) GM foods (b) Animal cloning
1 Answer
People worry about tampering with foods, disease and infringements on the natural order.
Explanation:
People worry that GM foods can create bigger better veg and fruit and tip the market away from small growers and producers, that "franken-foods" are the opposite of organic: full of chemicals that can harm you and that "tube food" can contain all sorts of addictive chemicals or artificial coloring. Some people believe it is unnatural or wrong to mess with plants to get them to suit aesthetic needs or to fulfill high demands and that doing so will bite us in the rear eventually.
People also think that cloning is unnatural. The meat produced from livestock could be somehow defective or lacking in quality. Concern is also placed on the possibility of cloned livestock being inhumane, either in the copying of living things with the possibility of a deformed result, or in the treatment of these animals, their individual worth cheapened by their expendability.
Both ethical objections stem from fears of misuse of technology, a distrust of the sources of our products, and the idea that nature has a right way to operate that we are going against. The arguments may not be scientific (we've been genetically modifying foods for centuries), but it's important to address and examine people's concerns nonetheless.
