Stakeholder #3

     Oh hey, it’s Erin. Whoa, she doesn’t look too good. And look, it’s also Jack and Leah. They don’t look so great either. As for the rest of them, none of them look healthy. These are the sick and diseased. Sure, some people care about them. Some people would stand by their bedside while they scream bloody murder. There are people who would help them after the gargling of the warm and slimy vomit in their throat caused them to violently cough up blood. But, there are those who don’t. There are people out there who choose to forget the sick because they are too weak to contribute anything to society.

            People who have cancer or some type of virus seem to be a large part of our society. They often accumulate a bunch of attention (as they should) to raise awareness about a disease. They are more stubborn than anything else. I am not saying that they are stubborn in the negative sense but quite the opposite. They the dedicated go getters.

            People are very kind on social media to people who are sick. They often claim that they will “pray” for them and keep them in their thoughts. They offer them help in any way possible. But do they really do all of these things? This can usually be answered by how people act around the sick in public. Would they offer them all of the condolences that they did online? Most likely not.

Mieza Luis José. "El cancer se cura" 02/04/11 via flickr
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A. “Can we just simplify and remove most major genetic diseases from the populace now? I would think there would be a moral obligation to, until religion jumps in and says they want it 'like god intended.'

B. “Why does everyone say “designer babies” like it’s a bad thing? Do you want your kids to have incurable diseases? Do you want your kids to be mentally disabled? So what if people can choose their kids eye color and height. Big frigging deal. The opportunity to reduce pediatric cancer FAR outweighs and moral hand wringing over the shape of your kids nose. Seriously this isn’t the 19th century. No one is “playing God” and Jesus isn’t coming down from on high to smite chronic masturbators. Knock off the superstitious bullshit.”

C. “My daughter suffers from a Rasopathy de novo mutation syndrome. I listen to people discuss this as if it is some ethereal thing and on a very academic level. I watch children suffer and die. We need to move ahead with non human trials and finally human trials. It is so tantalizingly frustrating to know that there is a knock out for my daughters specific gene already and we are just waiting on it to be tested. Go geneticists go.”

            The first comment is obviously in favor of eliminating diseases/cancer by starting the development of CRISPR (on humans) as soon as possible. He/she believes that we have a moral obligation to do so (since we would be saving lives). This person does not have any credentials and does not carry a whole lot of merit to his argument. This is mostly because the individual applies to the emotional side of things (by attacking the Christians) versus the facts of the situation.

            The next comment brings in a valid point. It certainly seems more beneficial to save the lives of people than to lose some over ethics. The author criticizes the Christians for believing that it’s more right to follow ethics than to save lives. However “right” you may think he is, the author has no credentials. He has no supporting evidence and is making this comment solely based on emotion.

            The last comment is one that is somewhat tricky to analyze. For one, she does have some credentials to what she is saying because one of her kids has this disease (implying that she knows a lot about it). But does her comment hold any weight or merit to it? Surely it is reasonable to say that CRISPR needs to be researched more because of how many lives we could be saving, but that’s not her point. That insight is based more on an unbiased appeal. This mother has more of a subjective view on the topic because her daughter has a disease that could be cured by this enzyme. She uses her daughter as an emotional appeal in order to make her point. This, sadly, does not hold very much weight.

            The only reason why these claims are similar to those made by scientists are because they are for genetic engineering. They differ from the scientists’ claims in that they appeal on an emotional basis and have no real merit to their comment. They fail to back up their point with any factual evidence. They are totally different, however, from the people against genetic engineering. They believe that we should put all morals behind us in order to save the lives of thousands.