Re: What are the advantages and disadvantages of genetic engineering?

This is a hard question to answer because it really depends upon your 
definitions and your expectations.

Genetic engineering is really a set of tools used to manipulate the genes of 
an organism. However when people use the term, it gets used in 2 different 
ways. The original meaning was really the application of recombinant DNA 
technology to study genes or engineer gene products to make useful things or 
to use in scientific experiments in order to better understand the way 
biology works.

Using that definition, one would say that genetic engineering is a very 
powerful and useful tool. It allows scientists to make discoveries and learn 
about biological processes that would otherwise be impossible. The only real 
disadvantage would only be if the method were to be abused. For example to 
create new biological warfare agents or things like that.

More recently, as our scientific skills have advanced, genetic engineering 
has come to refer to the genetic engineering of an orgranism. Introducing 
new genes into an organism or ever the most recent techniques of animal 
cloning. 

The advantages are the immense power these methods bring to scientists in 
doing experiments to understand how organsisms work and function, and to 
better understand diseases and possible treatments. We are also getting 
close to the time when gene therapy becomes reasonable for more than a few 
test cases. 

I think for medical applications there are great advantages because it opens 
up entire new vistas of possibilities. The disadvantages are no different 
than for any other new drug or new therapy. It takes time to understand all 
the long term implications, side effects etc. This is just the nature of any 
new therapy, and not really specific to gene therapy.

When it comes to more mundane applications such as in agriculture, a lot 
more issues come to play. Certainly genetic engineering has the capacity to 
improve crops or animals, provide disease resistance, change fertilizer or 
pesticide uses, etc. There are many potential benefits. The disadvantages 
are much the same as for any industrially driven advance in agriculture. 
Some company wants to make money off it (after all, they developed it) and 
therefore there will be an economic cost associated with it. Generally if 
the product is successful, the increased cost should be offset by increased 
productivity or savings elsewhere. But these downsides are similar for any 
advances in agri-business.

Are there other disadvantages. Well, to my mind the main problem is that we 
don't always know the full implications of what is being done. I don't think 
there is necessarily more danger in genetic engineering crops than any other 
traditional breeding programs, except that things can go faster. But there 
really are no hard and fast statements one can make about dangers or 
disadvantages. Most of the discussion really comes down to political 
philosophies and how someone deals with "What if?" types of questions where 
we dont' know if there is a problem but one can easily construct a scenario 
where a problem might arise. Therefore it`s up to you to evaluate that.