Introduction and Methods

Introduction

                In 2013, the scientific community was blown off its’ feet when they were introduced to a new biological process called clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, better known as CRISPR. CRISPR has the potential to turn the medical world on its’ head, as it offers the ability to search for, cut out, and replace specific genes from our DNA, potentially allowing us to destroy a variety of diseases by simply erasing them from our own gene sequences. This comes with one rather large hurdle, however. This kind of technology could allow gene manipulation, eugenics, and essentially human building possibilities. Are we has a population fit to ‘play god,’ with our own genes? What kind of ethical boundaries does this cross, if any?

                It’s generally believed by scientists that we could very well control genetic engineering technologies, like CRISPR, to make large bounds in the medical field. Even at this moment, CRISPR is currently being used in more minimal ways that could provide tremendous results. Lukas Dow’s descriptions of his work showed numerous methods to employ new genetic engineering methods, one of his most prevalent being his work on replicating the genes of cancer cells in order to better understand them (1). Its ambitious research, but one that could become critical in curing cancer if genetic engineering is popularized as a treatment in people. Regardless, just the implications of such technology inspire. It’s effected many in the scientific community, and is best summarized by Robert Jenkins, “…people with genetic problems are given hope that those problems can be spliced out. People, such as myself, are given hope that new organs can be recreated or old ones repaired.” (2) Genetic engineering has always seemed like a distant and hopeful topic, but with the introduction of CRISPR it’s began to seem much less distant than many thought, and has already impacted many in the scientific community.

                The extent of how scientists feel about genetic engineering does differ on some levels, however. Some not only support the endeavors, but vouch for them and support the moral ideology of it fervently. Joel Anderson, an ethics and philosophy professor, advocates for genetic engineering to such an extent that he published a paper breaking down and addressing several bioethics arguments that were posed against genetic engineering. That being said, some in the community do believe that the potential of certain genetic engineering technologies could be too for much for us to control. Jagadish Annervaz articulated this contradictory viewpoint well, saying, more or less, that we should not play with fire if we can’t be certain of the scientific and ethical consequences (5). Nonetheless, Annervaz does represent a minority in the scientific community, and many who research genetic engineering are optimistic about its expansion.

                This is a constantly expanding field, and one that is constantly being evaluated for its ethics and impact on morality. But, that is considerably from the researchers’ points of view. Do the ‘progressive,’ young, those studying and hoping to be the future of genetic engineering, feel any different? A study was actually conducted in 2003 by researchers Sadler and Zeidler, looking into students’ opinions and justifications pertaining to genetic engineering. In the end, it was a mess of opinions, with students split by many of the purposed ethical questions, and their justifications even more split. It was clearly a concept of heavy contention.

                Although Sadler and Zeidler had a very tight, well observed survey, they were merely taking the students answers at face value. There was no information of individual backgrounds of the students, and how that may have also effected the answers.

                That’s where I took it upon myself to survey students today. In a society that is constantly moving towards secularism and progressiveness, I hypothesized that modern college and high school students would be more supportive of genetic engineering concepts, and that it would be a strong majority. Regardless, I also tried to address the holes in Sadler and Zeidler’s survey by gathering two of what I considered to be the most prevalent details that would effect a student’s answers: their religion and fervor; as well as their past interactions with genetic engineering.

Methods

Procedure

                The overall structure of the research was that of a survey, all of which was conducted online. Participants would follow a link to the online site, where they would then go through a series of questions which will be listed for observation later in the piece. The questions were based around three main concepts: the participants’ background knowledge and interest in genetic engineering; hypothetical situations and the ethics of genetic engineering; and lastly religion and fervor. After filling out all the questions, students were left with one open ended question about the justifications of their choices, though it was specified that you should only do so if you have strong feelings about the subject. All of the information was then compiled into a series of pie charts, as well as the possibility to go back and see individual answers. That being said, the participants answers are still anonymous to me, so I cannot make any presumptions about the participants.

Participants

                The participating demographic was intended to be specifically and exclusively students of the high school and undergraduate level. This was done through the sharing of the link of the survey, so that I did not have to question participants’ ages on the survey itself.

                Emails were sent to all members of the class, who are all of undergraduate level of varying majors and minors, providing a not perfect, but plausible representation of general undergraduates. On top of this, I posted the link of the survey on social media, on which all the people who’d see the link were high schoolers and other college undergraduates.

                With this set in place, I can further split the demographic down by going through answers and separating the strongly religious from non-religious, those who’ve researched genetic engineering and those who haven’t, those who have genetic diseases and those who don’t, etc.

Analysis

                The format of the study provides two distinct types of data. The first is what I would call flat, or raw data. It’s the simple results and averages of all the respondents. It allows me to see, on average, how many people agree with prenatal engineering, how many people would actually use it for certain cases, and things like that. However, because I have questions pertaining to the history of participants and their religious beliefs, I can also analyze the ‘in-depth,’ information. That is, separating the participants in several different demographics and how that effected their choices through the rest of the survey. I have several different ways I can categorize and analyze this more specified and personal data, and did so in order to determine the most prevalent categories in terms of how they split the participants’ answers.