Response to Commercial Eugenics...

It's a little creepy how scientists nowadays have the power to actually almost control genetics. Isn't genetics supposed to be something natural? Giving birth and producing a child with inherited genes is a beautiful phenomenon, and I don't think it's something to be messed with or experimented. It says that over a five-year period and almost 600 patients, a successful therapy still had yet to be performed. That's a little scary. Once the experiments and procedures are perfected, they claim that the health of individuals will be higher and risk of birth defects will be lower. This all sounds like a great thing, but can't it also be dangerous? I think giving birth and making a child should just be natural. Also, how is it harming the parent? There has to be something done to the parent in order for the child to be effected, and I don't understand how messing with a pregnant woman's genes could be good for her. The costs of these procedures will no doubtedly begin sky high, and even though they will drop in the years to come, the 21st century isn't exactly a time where people have extra money to spend on not-so-promising experiments. It also says that parents who choose the "traditional" way of genetic biology, they may regret not choosing the alternative option. However, personally, I would feel even worse if I agreed to the corrective gene changes and something were to go wrong because of them. Although it seems sketchy and dangerous, there seem to be many reasons to believe in these procedures. For example, when done successfully, preventions of diseases such as cancer and diabetes can be promising. The health and safety of the children to be would be even more likely, which is every parent's concern.

Response to "Searching for Dummies"

In the article, "Searching for Dummies," Edward Tenner is practically portraying online search engines as easy accesses to finding information in a negative way. I don't think Google is necessarily making people any less smart. I have succeeded in learning a lot from the site in a short amount of time, which is convenient for when I'm in a rush or need to know something right away. However, I have noticed that since these search engines have been growing and becoming more powerful, teachers have been taking citations of essays more seriously. They want less information from the internet and more from library sources, such as books, encyclopedias, magazine articles, etc. I also admit that because of the amount of information accessible on the internet, it would take me a much longer time to cite something from an actual hard-copy source because of how frequently I am looking information up online. Although internet sources could provide a researcher with false information, as long as there are credited authors with links to credentials on the page, the information can be trusted. The researcher also has to use good sense and judgement.