Why BioTech is important
Biotechnology has many advantages including helping improve food quality, quantity, and processing, as well as also has having functions in manufacturing, where simple cells and proteins can be manipulated to produce chemicals.
The source of biotechnology comes from the fact that technology aims to create tools to empower humans, aiming to change humans themselves to better fit them to the world. Also, Biotechnology is the application of advances made in the biological sciences, especially involving the science of genetics and its application.
Its implications in health and medicine gives the importance of Biotechnology, by having scientists being able through genetic engineering, which is the controlled alteration of genetic material, to create new medicines, including interferon for cancer patients, synthetic human growth hormone and synthetic insulin, among others.
As such, the significance of biotechnology is shown by having scientists use the tools of biotechnology to manipulate cells with increasing control, from precision editing of DNA to synthesizing entire genomes from their basic chemical building blocks. These cells could go on to become bomb-sniffing plants, miracle cancer drugs, or ‘de-extinct’ wooly mammoths, and biotechnology may be a crucial ally in the fight against climate change according to the Future of Life Institute.
“The impact of biotech is huge on people’s lives, having the majority of the food we eat coming from engineered plants, which are modified – either via modern technology or by more traditional artificial selection – to grow without pesticides, to require fewer nutrients, or to withstand the rapidly changing climate,” the institute added.
“Manufacturers have substituted petroleum-based ingredients with biomaterials in many consumer goods, such as plastics, cosmetics, and fuels. Your laundry detergent? It almost certainly contains biotechnology. So do nearly all of your cotton clothes,” it noted.
Even so, biotech is present in our detailed lives, helping us in every way possible, such as the assistance to prenatal screening and home pregnancy test, in addition to immunizations and antibiotics, which improved life expectancy. Also, biotechnology is the main reason for many drugs that heal diseases such as cancer and heart disease.
On the other hand, biotechnology has its own disadvantages and consequences for the fact that microbes are tiny and difficult to detect, however the dangers are enormous. Further, engineered cells could divide on their own and spread in the wild, with the possibility of far-reaching consequences.
The unintended consequences of benign research or the purposeful manipulation of biology to cause harm, are factors that prove that biotechnology can be harmful.