disadvantages of genetic engineering?

Question

in a list please <3

Answer 1

The reason DNA is so interesting is it is the information store for the cellular reproductive system basic to life.
There is are risk based objections to genetic engineering
1. We've already accidentally totally lost control of several genetic traits that we thought were carefully engineered and limited into the wild populations, and now there's nothing we can do about it. Should our reach exceed our grasp, we could mess things up brilliantly.
2. Man has never made technical advances without figuring out how to apply them to war. The implications are frightening.
3. Look at the example of eugenics: reasonable people making apparently reasonable abstractions did truly horrible, evil, despicable things to others, justifying it as being sensible under the best, modern interpretations of science. It's best to be conservative in our approach to new technologies and their risks.

Then you can look at it from other points of view: how do you own technologies in genetic engineering? Most of the things we need are already being done in living cells, how do we apply patent law and intellectual property rights to the genetic world? Will the technology become relatively unencumbered and universally used, or is it going to get carved into competing islands of patent protected IP that cost billions to generate and never pay off, so locked up with legal concerns that no one, or at most a few commercial concerns, can make profitable headway with it?