Will human be immortal?

“Immortality” is this possible? Yes it is definitely possible in the near future. But how can humans to be immortal and what could be the reason for the death. It is an interesting argument. To give a small shock to your brain about the reason this is an open invitation to read the whole article in one breath.

    

        Before talk about the immortals we should have a little understanding about another area called

Transgenesis. In this area, we are going to give our attention to genetically modified organisms and other

related things.

           Ok. Let’s go to the basic concepts. Do you know that every human being, every animal, every plant and also every living organism are built from one basic building block. What is that? It is called a “cell”.

 When talking about the microorganisms like bacteria, fungi, and algae commonly they consist of one cell or few cells. Cells are very small structures that are not visible under the naked eye. That is why these microorganisms are invisible to us. So we use microscopes to visualize these organisms. Light microscope is the best example for this.

         Humans and other large scale animals are also made from large amount of these cells. But structure 

and functionalities may little bit different from microorganisms. It is believed that all these living organisms 

evaluated from one common ancestor. (evolution.berkeley.edu, 2012) All these organisms hold the key 

features in their bodies and transfer these features to next generation. Okay let’s go the larger scale. Think 

about humans. They all have minimum

 of one feature similar to their parents. For an example all children have their mothers or fathers face cut. If not they have any other similarity. So how these things happen? Deep inside to the every living cell, they have instructions for their shape, size and texture. These instructions are written in chemical code known as Deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA for short. And also these instructions are transferred from one generation to another. That is the reason for children look similar to their parents. This code works like a blue print. A blue print is a plan for make a building. Your DNA tells to your body to grow ten fingers and one nose and also one mouth. (Hyde, 2009).

            These DNA makes very long bundle in the inside of the cell. DNA code can be written in an infinite number of patterns. DNA made from combine of three main parts. Those are known as nitrogenous base part, deoxyribose sugar part and phosphate group part. DNA has four nitrogenous bases.

 Those are adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine. Changing the place of these bases in the DNA chain can produce infinite number of DNA chains which are different from one to another. A small area in every DNA chain causes to affect a special function of an organism known as a “GENE”. Large amount of genes coded in to one DNA molecule and controls every function of an organism. (Hyde, 2009).

            At least one base change from its natural place is known as “gene mutation”. The reason for the bio diversity of the world is these DNA mutations happen through a very long period.  This is a natural process. But nowadays scientists have done these in the laboratories. They change the gene code of one organisms and input new gene code from another organism.

www.highschoolbiology.otago.ac.nz states that “transgenesis is the process of inserting a gene from one source into a living organism that would not normally contain it”.

 So using special techniques scientist can change the natural gene sequence of an organism with gene sequence of another organism and produce special new characters in the subject organism.

Can you think about what can be done from this new technology?  Yes of course it can create new life forms and modify existing life forms. A new word came to us, which is “Genetically Modified Organisms or GMOs”. I would believe that you know about the spider man or superman or Xmen?  From this technology we can create these kinds of modified humans or GMOs. We can extract spider genes from a spider and input them in to a human andwe may be able to create a spider man. Do you here about the latest film called “In time”. That is one of the best examples for a story about the genetically modified humans and the future world. In that film all living humans created by genetically modifications and all of them are immortals. But immortality makes a catastrophic effect on humans and all of them try to live many years and begin to fight for life.

So likewise transgenesis holds enormous contribution to the modern society and also it contains some ethical issues. First let’s talk about what are the advantages of the transgenesis and genetically modified organisms.

Transgenesis allows scientists to develop organisms that express a novel trait or characteristic not normally found in that organism. For an example a type of rice known as golden rice has increased the level of Vitamin A (an essential nutrient for human growth) (Glen, 2010). Scientists are producing many types of transgenic animals. Such as Transgenic Disease Models, Transpharmers, Xenotransplanters, Transgenic food sources (Bazinet, 2005).

Transgenic disease models are animals made from genetically modification to exhibit human diseases. These animals help to study about initiations and spreading of diseases and help to find cures (Bazinet, 2005).

Transpharmers are animals that can produce pharmaceutical compounds in either in their milk, eggs, or blood. Few years ago many animals killed to get essential chemicals required for medical needs such as Hormones like Insulin. But with this new technology these chemicals can be gathered from milk or eggs without killing the animals (Bazinet, 2005).

Xenotransplantation is the method where an animal organ transplanted into a human body.  For an example we can take rats with human organs. See the picture (Bazinet, 2005).

Transgenic food sources are genetically modified animals to better accommodate the needs of human consumption. Such as super fish that grows larger than a normal fish (Bazinet, 2005).

Not only animals but also there are genetically modified plants and microorganisms. Some GM plants hold the potential of producing human vaccines. These plants are edible and supply vaccines easily to human body without injecting by a needle. Nowadays scientists can produce a plant with a vaccine for a disease known as non- Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. As mentioned earlier if we can produce a plant with Insulin hormone definitely that will change the world (Glen, 2010).

There are various kinds of GM plant’s to accommodate the needs of human consumption. Such as high harvesting plants which need law amount of nutrients and fertilizers, more resistance plants for insects, environment and diseases, long lasting vegetables & Fruits etc..(Peña, 2005).

And also transgenic microbes (bacteria and fungi) have many commercial and practical applications, including the production of mammalian products. Most successful commercial enterprises use transgenic bacteria to produce human proteins which are essential for humans to maintain their day to day life. Another promising application of these microbes is  environmental cleanup, or known as “bioremediation” (bookrags.com, 2012)

Now we know the advantages of these genetically modified organisms or transgenic organisms. Then we should discuss about the ethical issues behind this new technology. The most commonly cited argument can be referred to as playing god problem (Taupitz, 2009). We don’t know how life began and also we don’t know exactly how cells of organisms functioning. Then we can create new life forms and modify existing life forms without knowing it. And also we are disturbing the line between two species (Glenn, 2004). Species are a class of individuals having some common characteristics or qualities (www.dictionary.reference.com, 2012). This is a crucial problem and there are many arguments related on this.

We don’t know about the health risks behind the transgenesis and GMOs. We eat them but we don’t know how these things react inside our bodies. Actually we can’t say anything immediately after eating these organisms (Taupitz, 2009). We have to wait until 10 or 20 years for any complications. Effect to the environment also consider as an unknown risk.

Another issue is, what unintended personal, social and cultural consequences could result? (Glenn, 2004). In the near future these new technologies will rule the world and change the route of the world. It may cause many ethical problems like In time movie which is discussed previously.

Although currently we test these new modifications with animals, finally we have to test with humans. This is a large problem and many agitators conflicting for this. (Vallero, 2007)

Animal suffering is another area about the negative side of transgenesis. Numerous protesters do not allow for producing transgenic animals as they will suffer from these new modifications (Bazinet , 2005). This also has many arguments. The thing we don’t know is how animals going to suffer and it is really unbearable. An example is transgenic rats with human organisms.

            In modern society scientists have created cows and goats which produce spider silk proteins with their milk. These proteins are used for human consumptions (Glenn, 2004).  But the ethical issue is how a calf drinks these silky milk and so on.

As humans we are trying to survive. We may not think about other living organisms and environment. That 

will disturb the balance of the nature. So before using these new technologies we may think about the ethical 

side as well. Otherwise the world will become a dangerous place for humans.

References

1). Bazinet .M and Braxton .M (2005) , transgenic animals, Project Report

bookrags.com (2012) Transgenic Microorganisms, [Online]

http://www.bookrags.com/research/transgenic-microorganisms-gen-04/ [online accessed 17-02-2012]

2). dictionary.reference.com (2012), species, [Online]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/species [online accessed 17-02-2012]

3). evolution.berkeley.edu (2012), An introduction to evolution, [Online].

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_02 [online accessed 17-02-2012]

4). Glenn.L.M (2004), Ethical issues in genetic engineering and transgenics, online journal,

http://walnuths.edlioschool.com/ourpages/auto/2010/8/18/69807689/Ethical%20Issues%20in%20Genetic%20Engineering%20Article.pdf [online accessed 17-02-2012]

5). High School Biology, (2012), Transgenesis, [Online].

http://highschoolbiology.otago.ac.nz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=127&Itemid=79 [online accessed 17-02-2012]

6). Hyde. N, (2009), DNA, Canda, United States, Crabtree publishing, p: 1-6

7). Peña. L, (2005), Transgenic plants: methods and protocols , New jersy, Humans press Inc. P:3-5 [online accessed 17-02-2012]

http://books.google.lk/books?id=b05TqrHsfOsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=transgenic+plants&hl=en&sa=X&ei=618-T5dSzNCtB8nXtOUH&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=transgenic%20plants&f=false

8). Taupitz. J (2009), CHIMBRIDS-Chimeras and Hybrids in Comparative European and International research, London, New york, Springer. P: 592-595

9). Vallero.D.A, (2007), Biomedical ethics for engineers, California, Elsevier p: 68-70

http://books.google.lk/books?id=AeT56Pi8LFYC&pg=PA68&dq=ethics+of+transgenesis&hl=en&sa=X&ei=4n8-T62ZKY3RrQfwhqzRBw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=ethics%20of%20transgenesis&f=false [online accessed 17-02-2012]