19 Advantages and Disadvantages of Genetic Engineering

Genetic engineering involves the deliberate modification of an organism’s characteristics. This process occurs when there is direct manipulation of the genetic material through the use of biotechnology.

Paul Berg made the first recombinant DNA molecule in 1972 by combining a lambda virus with the monkey virus SV40. This process can either insert genes into the genetic sequences or remove them. Genetic engineers can insert the information randomly or target specific parts of the genome.

The first recognized life form created through genetic modification is a bacterium made by Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen in 1983. Foreign DNA was inserted into a mouse by Rudolf Jaenisch in 1974. Since then, a variety of different genetically engineered animals have reached the marketplace, including the Enviropig and naked chickens.

There are several advantages and disadvantages of genetic engineering that we must consider when evaluating this science.

List of the Advantages of Genetic Engineering

1. Genetic engineering allows us to achieve a faster growth rate.
Plants and animals that receive genetic engineering through biotechnology can mature with greater speed than they would if the process proceeded naturally. We can engineer our crops to increase their yields, flavors, and visual attractiveness to create more profits in the food chain. This work allows us to create farms in areas that have low light levels or excessive heat. This advantage gives the agricultural sector more profitability, additional resources per asset, and a faster time to the marketplace.

This advantage doesn’t apply to food products only. Genetic engineering in sheep can help them to grow wool faster so that there are multiple shearings per year.

2. Biotechnology allows us to create genetic levels of pest resistance.
Genetic modifications to plants and animals give us the opportunity to create higher levels of pest resistance. This process allows the genes of each organism to go through an alteration process that makes them less susceptible to specific encounters in the environment. Built-in repellents can stop crops from being consumed without the need to apply pesticides and other chemicals. Animals can become more resilient to disease without the need to administer antibiotics and other medications.

This advantage provides a secondary benefit that’s worth considering. Since there are fewer chemicals and fertilizers needed because of genetic engineering, we can protect our freshwater supplies better with biotechnology.

3. We can create new types of plants and animals.
Genetic engineers can take the genes from different species to combine them so that new options are created from the combination. Biotechnology makes it possible to add more nutrients to the products that are in our food chain, increasing their value to the average consumer without changing the farming processes needed to create viable items.

4. Genetic engineering can benefit human health.
Genetic engineering grants us the chance to enhance human health because we can improve the chromosomes and sequences that lead to severe health conditions for some people. This technology provides us with the option to transform genotypes before someone is born as a way to manipulate specific traits in that future human potentiality.

It could eliminate genetic disease before it begins, correct birth defects, or become the foundation of treatments to help those who already have a correctable condition.

5. Biotechnology allows us to increase the number of positive traits in organisms.
The goal of genetic engineering is to design a better world by encouraging the positive traits of every life form at the cellular level. We would hold these enhanced changes while decreasing or dropping the ones that add to our vulnerabilities as a species. Although the treatment process would address genetic issues first, we would also use biotechnology to reduce problems with cancer, improve our way of living, and produce cures for diseases like ALS, Parkinson’s disease, or Alzheimer’s disease.

6. We can improve the quality of our croplands through genetic engineering.
One way that agricultural industries promote higher levels of food access is through the use of artificial fertilizers in cropland soil. Adding nitrates and other nutrients make it possible to grow food products in places where it would typically be unsuitable. When too many of these items get into the soil, the salts wash through into local water supplies.

By creating crops that naturally resist pests and weeds, we can improve the groundwater tables. This advantage is possible because each item grown is precisely engineered to adapt to the present conditions.

7. Biotechnology can reduce the cost of food access for many families.
Genetic engineering allows us to expand the amount of food that is available to communities worldwide. It also gives us a chance to create products that have a longer shelf life, reducing the cost of waste loss in the agricultural industry. This combination of factors influences the law of supply and demand for our grocery marketplaces. When there is more food available to purchase, then the price for each item will be less.

That means countries with 10% or more of household discretionary income spent on grocery purchases could begin to funnel resources toward different needs. It would improve their GDP, create more spending opportunities, and promote a better way of life.

8. Genetic engineering improves our pharmaceutical research work.
We can use genetic engineering methods as a way to develop new drugs that can help patients with a variety of health conditions. The science behind this approach could help make these pharmaceutical options more dependable and efficient.

We are already seeing the benefits of this tool with the development of HGH (human growth hormone) treatments. When genetic engineering applies to the thousands of potential remedies that people use every day, it may become possible to treat health problems with fewer resources. This advantage could eventually decrease the cost of care for everyone.

9. People have more options for natural treatments.
Even though medical science is advancing rapidly, we are still running into one crucial issue. When someone requires an organ transplant, then the immune system may decide to reject the new body part as a foreign invader. Any treatment method that includes a difference in genetic material creates this potentiality.

We currently treat patients in this situation with immunosuppressant medication as a way to encourage them to recapture their lives. When we take an approach that uses genetic engineering, we can create outcomes for people by using their own cells. This advantage would then reduce the chance of rejection in the future.

10. Genetic engineering creates new products and markets for the economy.
When crops start delivering higher yields, then it is possible to produce additional commodities that fall outside of the human food chain. When there is an excess of sugarcane or corn available in the market, then the crops are useful in the creation of fuels like ethanol. The United States and Brazil are leaders in this advantage, contributing over 90% of the biofuel market in this area.

We can produce enough food to generate feedstocks for animals that support a healthy food profile at the same time. Because we have access to more crops as a foundation in our marketplace, this advantage allows us to create new, innovative goods or services that can help the planet in numerous ways.

11. This scientific field can ensure our food chain remains stable.
Droughts affected Texas and California for several years in the 2000s. These extended weather events robbed reservoirs of water, reduced farming outcomes, and caused the price of produce to rise. Economic losses totaled more than $5 billion in each state. We cannot predict what the annual weather cycles will be, but we can take aggressive actions to stabilize our food chain through the science of genetic engineering.

We have already seen what the outcome of such efforts can be thanks to the Third Agricultural Revolution. During the 1950s and 1960s, the developing world saw a massive increased in crop production thanks to a set of research technology transfer initiatives. Genetic engineering could provide the foundation for a fourth Green Revolution to occur on our plant in the coming months and years.

List of the Disadvantages of Genetic Engineering

1. The growth of plants and animals through genetic engineering can create less nutritional value.
One of the primary reasons that biotechnology efforts focus on plants and animals is that the work can benefit the human supply chain. Having resources that can grow bigger and faster means that we can begin to counter the problems of hunger on our planet today. When researchers make changes to an organism’s genome to create a faster growth rate, there tends to be less nutritional value in that food product.

One example of this disadvantage is the quality of chicken meat that’s sold in the United States. The products contain 224% more fat than in the past. Almost 90% of broiler chickens have muscular myopathies today that lead to white striping, leading to fatty muscle meat that contains 9% less protein. Chickens represent 95% of the animals raised for food in the United States.

2. Nature is continuously adapting to our genetic engineering efforts.
Bacteria and viruses are constantly adapting to the environment around them. Their ability to adapt means that changes to their biological makeup can occur over time. A natural resistance begins to build against the genetic alterations in the plants and animals, creating problems over time that adversely impact the health of animals in the same species that don’t receive biotechnology improvements.

About 2 million people in the United States contract an antibiotic-resistant infection each year. 23,000 people will lose their battle against this infection. The genetic engineering changes that we make can increase the speed of evolution in bacteria and viruses to unsafe levels.

3. There are adverse side effects that occur with genetic engineering.
Biotechnology solves issues by transferring genes to an organism so that it can start fighting the problem it faces. This goal can sometimes cause adverse side effects that are detrimental to the species and the surrounding environment. You could design plants to operate in fields where less water is necessary for survival, but then need to counter that issue by taking the crops out of direct sunlight because it becomes sensitive to UVA/UVB rays.

Biotechnology specialists have a reasonable idea about what may happen when they start making gene alterations in plants or animals. Nature also has a way of creating spontaneous changes that are unpredictable.

4. It changes the levels of diversity in a species.
Plants and animals need a certain level of diversity within their species to guarantee survival. When genetic engineering begins to occur, then we begin to make plants and animals become more like each other. That means the modified species become stronger, taking over the market or environment from the ones that didn’t receive an upgrade. This disadvantage eventually leads to a lack of diversity within the genetic profile of the species.

Then the species becomes more susceptible to a disease or pest that can get around the defenses built into the organism through biotechnology. A fungus that devastated banana crops since 2016 has made its way to Central and South America, threatening the Cavendish banana because entire plantations have the same variety. This issue happened with the Gros Michel bananas until the 1960s.

5. Biotechnology might lead to food-based copyrights.
Our current copyright laws make it possible for genetic engineering organizations to obtain a patent on the structures they create because it is an artificial process. Copyright protections are in place as a way to help businesses recover their R&D losses by creating a structure for future profits.

When this issue applies to food supplies, then we must go through specific businesses to obtain what we need for basic survival unless there are alternative resources to use. A corporation could decline to let anyone use their product with this structure, making it possible to cut off an entire industry as a way to advance its own program.

6. Genetic engineering practices could create new diseases.
When we treat genetic conditions, then there is always the possibility that an outcome does not occur. Many of the modern approaches in this field have created temporary benefits at best. Then there is the issue of new disease development which may occur. Influenza is notorious for its ability to change how it infects people. Our efforts to reduce disease may end up causing more of them to develop.

Genetic engineering could create changes in plants or animals that may cause unexpected allergic reactions in people. Inserting genes from an animal into a plant could create social or spiritual problems for some lifestyles. It is even possible that biotechnology could cause organisms to become toxic to humans.

7. This science could be used for selfish purposes.
We currently look at the methods of genetic engineering as a way to protect people from the various ailments that can harm them through no fault of their own. Using therapeutic tools to repair a chromosomal issue in a fetus enhances the potential of that human life. The problem with this disadvantage is that the same tools can target specific sequences that could alter the way a child looks. This issue could make physical changes easier, such as eye color, or if they have curly hair.

It may also be possible to alter the intelligence of an individual through this process. When an outcome where “designer babies” is a real possibility, this process could create new societal classes in our world that might alter how we perceive ourselves as humans.

8. It could cause agricultural workers to start losing their jobs.
Economic analysists fear that up to 40% of current jobs could be replaced by artificial intelligence and automation technologies in the next 10 years. When we look at the work of genetic engineers with plants and animals, the employment opportunities for the agricultural industry are threatened by their activities.

Over half of the worldwide commercial seed market is controlled by just 3 companies: DuPont, Syngenta, and Monsanto.

Monsanto has already sued dozens of farmers who grow the seeds the company genetically modified without permission, earning verdicts totaling over $20 million. In some of the cases, the seeds came from an authorized farmer and blew into neighboring fields because of regular growing conditions in the area. Over 140 patent infringement lawsuits against more than 400 farmers have already been filed in almost 30 states.

Conclusion

Genetic engineering may always be a controversial branch of the biotechnology industry. Its ability to provide the marketplace with new products for consumption, from food to medicine, is an advantage that we cannot ignore.

How we change organisms through the manipulation of their DNA, both plants and animals, can create unforeseen consequences that may not be positive.

As we learn more about this scientific field, we’ll get to know more about the potential ramifications of the choices we make. That means the advantages of genetic engineering could change over time. Until that day occurs, these vital points will help us to understand where the various areas of risk exist.