The Case For/Against Biotechnology/Bioengineering

"Just because a new technology has the possibility to be used in a way that is harmful does not mean that the technology itself is harmful. It depends on the user's intentions, which cannot be controlled. For example, a hammer is a tool which can be used to kill and destroy, yet it is a tool which can also be used to build and create. It is not the hammer's fault that a person decided to use it to commit murder, it is just a tool. Does that mean that we should stop producing hammers? No." I would say that hammers and biotech are on a totally different scales. One is a simple tool, while capable of murder has a limited scale of destruction. While biotech while having great promise, could easily be programmed to destroy the people,plants,or animals civillization depends on. If you want to make a truly great world based on biotech you need to offer it at a cheap cost, almost essentially free. Both to combat the scale of the worlds problems and to prevent rationing this lifesaving technology for profit. Basically you want to to take the examples of the medical and oil industry and do the exact opposite. Only thing is cheap biotech would be easy to get your hands on.Making it easy for any terrorist or malacious goverment to get their hands on. Rationing in the care of corporations would be purely profit based.Biotech would stay expensive while people died and the enviroment suffered, until prices eventually went down, where they would remain affordable but very steep. Free market rationing, would lead to no better a result in defending ourselves against bioterror, because everything goes to the highest bidder and despite what conspiracy theorists think most corporate HQ'S arent fort knox. The free market would market anykind of bioweapon they could get their hands on. They would probably market biotech without regard for the enviroment.Say lake X has serious algea and its really pissing the boatowners on lake X, corporation x decides to unleash a certain algea killing bacteria this bacteria then kills all the algea which cause all the fish to die in lake X disrupting the whole ecosystem. Corporation X got their money, the boatowners dont have pesky algea to deal with anymore although its kind of difficult to fish without fish in the lake. The scenario described above would be the worst way and most likely way, biotech would be distributed. There is the likelihood of government run biotech which would be preferable to the free biotech and free market scenarios described but would suffer from a number of pitfalls: It would be slower research and development, the govenment would have the perfect bio-weapons already, Tons of paperwork, sometimes oversecurity and beuracracy, people would be mad they are paying for bio-tech they don't morally support. There would be tremendous pressure to privatize bio-tech and tremendous outrage if it was nationalized. What would the reagan revolutionaries think?Seemingly trivial scientific issues would become national debate. The green peaceand peta crew would come crawling out of the woodwork. The only person who might have the political capital to keep biotech national, might be Obama,maybe I still think that the tremendous financial gain of this industry would be to much to keep this a national industry. Theres the issue of modifying human beings; which is already ongoing and huge bussiness( which i have no moral objections)but as soon asthis became reality, the threat from teerorist groups would range all the way across the spectrum from homegrown right wing terror groups to al-quedia,to even japanese anarchist groups. If you think they are going to sit around let you play god or even let progress go further you're wrong. What better weapons to attack society with than the technology you dispise. Then there is the question of whether once biotech is implemented we will create stable societal models or just even more gargantuan unsustainable ones.The choice is ours. I think only an idiot would stop work on this technology, but definately wewould have to sleep with oneeye open.