Speech on The Moral Place of Genetics by Jonathan Ahumuza

 Congratulations for waking up this morning and thank you for making it to your first class in Genetics on time. School and tests are literally always related so let’s start with a question, why did you choose a Genetics course? Shiro Ishii used genetics to kill over 600 war prisoners a year whilst developing biological weapons for Japan in the Second World War. However, Sir Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe used genetics to introduce IVF technology to the world allowing the infertile and labour burdened community around 12 million new born babies since 1979. A career in genetics is one full of ethical stigma but I wish for all of us to express the purpose of Genetics to lift up life rather than it be seen as weapon to stomp on it.

Firstly, I must address to you the dark corners of this field of biology for today only being eugenics and genetic engineering. Eugenics is defined as the study of how to arrange human reproduction to increase the occurrence of inherited features deemed desirable in a population. However as demonstrated by the Holocaust, is an insane ideology used to justify genocide as this was the same doctrine adopted by Adolf Hitler whilst murdering around 6 million Jews. Eugenics as a concept promotes segregation of people into higher and lower life forms systematically stripping the value of people’s lives based on subjective features like appearance and features not fully controlled by genes like intelligence. In doing so also encouraged your generation’s social plagues of racism and oppression of peoples whose features were deemed undesired. Genetic engineering is defined as the deliberate modification of the characteristics of organisms by manipulating their genes. A good example is the relatively new CRISPR technology being used to make ‘Designer Babies’. As you can see in the comic, a couple are smiling extatically as they receive their LV baby from the designer baby clinic.  Although you may get your perfect LV child, your friends will want the same baby and so will their friends and so on which probably halves the genetic diversity across humanity which then means we are more vulnerable to one new disease killing the whole species.

Now, as the dark exists light is also born through genetics providing life not just to humans but also animals, plants and bacteria with a better chance of survival and a brighter future at that. For example, with the discovery of insulin by Frederick G Banting and his team, we know how to treat diabetes through the industrial production of the protein using genetically modified bacteria which will be touched upon in the course but ultimately gives diabetics a chance to live longer making their own families and creating memories which would not be without the intervention of genetics. Through genetic engineering, we have been able to make massive leaps at treating genetically inherited diseases like cystic fibrosis, haemophilia, sickle cell anaemia and many others previously thought incurable and fatal. By understanding genes, you will be more able to build the genetic immunity of deadly diseases in billions. You can even help solve world hunger by genetically modifying crops helping them survive the extreme climates making it easier to grow and increasing food supply globally.

As we go through this course together, please remember genetics is a field where it is our responsibility to use the tools of knowledge and understanding to protect, preserve and drive progression of life, beyond just us as people but also the Earth and its inhabitants. As long as you hold this principle closely to your heart and guide it with the moral codes you will soon be sworn under, genetics will always have a morally just place in this world and so will you.