What are the social and ethical implications of GE?
The issues can be broken down into two areas: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic concerns are those that have to do with moral concerns about the very process of GE: that it is unnatural or against religious views for one or more reasons. If intrinsic objections are held, then the extrinsic ones are irrelevant, in the same way that if you object to capital punishment on moral grounds, you dont argue about the methods by which it should be carried out. In New Zealand, for instance, the indigenous people (Maori) do not approve of mixing genes from different species. Their objection is a spiritual one, based on their belief that ancestors are like godsto be reveredand ancestral heritage and inheritance are therefore also sacred. However, the Maori culture never had to deal with such complexities as GE until recently. It is fair to say that an intrinsic spiritual argument is the only one which cannot be refuted by an ethics committee. Other intrinsic objections include: GE is unnatural; tr
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