Comment on "Your Inner Healers"

  The article I read for the assignment involves a new type of biotechnology and the enormous potential that comes with it. A group of Japanese scientists discovered a formula for creating induced pluripotent stem cells from adult cells with only four necessary genes and without eggs or embryos. By dedifferentiating (reverting back to a more primitive type) the adult stem cells, we can discover the source of many diseases that we fail to cure today, and find new ways of therapy.
  However, I don't believe that the technology considered as the modern "Fountain of Youth" is ethical. The entire idea of evolution and natural selection discovered by Charles Darwin was based on survival of the fittest. Species adapt to different environments by mutations, and the group that cannot survive becomes extinct. This has always been the rule of the jungle as we know it, and defying that rule will not make us God or Mother Nature itself. When this type of technology applies to everyone in the world, when everyone can live as long as they want, and when all humans stops producing new generations due to overpopulation, will the technology make us the saviors of mankind, or the destroyers of the world?

- Andy Liu '15