Ellis Battista
Ms. Graysmith
English 151 Writing Log 5B
27 April 2011
The first story I read was called “It’s A Girl” by Kathleen Fackelmann. The story mainly talks about having scientist help you get the desired gender of the baby that you want. Although it is not completely accurate yet, they have a pretty good rate at which the correct gender is born. The one problem is that they can only do this process accurately with on gender, they still cannot do it for males. The scientist seemed like they were doing a good job, but the author asked the question when will it be too far? There are already a lot of people who do not agree with this in the United States. The first hot spot I found was on page 364 and it said “Murray notes that scientists working on the human genome project soon will have methods of identifying disease-causing genes as well as the DNA that produces characteristics such as hair color, height, athletic ability, and perhaps some behaviors.” The reason why this is one of my hot spots is because this is a very controversial topic. I have pretty strong feelings about changing babies scientifically. On terms of gender, I feel like parents can be leaning toward one gender, but should never chose a gender just because they want one. The only reason I can see acceptable for a couple to predetermine their baby’s gender is if one of the parents have a disease or sickness that is most likely to pass down to a certain gender. I think that if an adult has a disease like that, they should be able to have scientists try to give them a baby that is the opposite gender of the one that would get the disease. I do not like the idea of scientists genetically altering sperm and egg in order to change physical features about the baby at all. Once again, if there is some sort of disease that could be prevented from this, then I think it would be okay, but other than that I feel like it is cheating. To me, altering a kid’s physical features is like an athlete taking steroids, it is cheating. Another thing I think about is that they have not even discovered how to do this yet, and have no idea if it is safe at all.
My second hot spot is on page 365 and says “Although lawmakers may never regulate sex-selection methods, Murray contends that genetic counselors should begin developing guidelines to steer couples away from the designer-baby concept. The reason why I like this is because I agree with it. I feel like some parents are hard on their kids, and when their kids do not have the athletic talent or intelligence, the parents are much more critical of them, and in some cases do not love them as much. What happens when a parents wants his or her kid to be better than they were, and they have scientists genetically alter the baby, and the kid is not what the parent thought it would be? In some cases, not all, I think that the parents would have potential to be so disappointed and even angry at the kid, and possibly not love the kid as much because of it. Another reason why I liked this is because abortion is a huge extremely controversial topic, and I feel like when the technology comes out to change traits of babies, it will be the same.
The second story I read was called “Why Should We Go to Mars” by Kim Stanley Robinson. The story was short, and mainly about going to Mars because it will benefit our understanding about our world. The first hot spot I found was on page 390, and it says “we should go to Mars to search for life there.” I know it is kind of stupid but I have always been interested in aliens and life outside of Earth. I know that we will not find any life that is extremely developed or look like humans or anything, but I think that finding a life form, even if it is just something like small bacteria is excited. It is exciting because that proves that Mars is livable for at least some life. That makes me think that sometime in the future there really could be intelligent life on mars, but that is most likely just my imagination. My second hot spot is on the same page, and it says “the search for life would be difficult to do mechanically, and the truth is that humans are much better at field geology than robots.” The author is talking about sending humans instead of robots to mars. This would be good from a scientific standpoint because like the author said, they would get better research. Another reason it would be good is because humans could really explore the planet, instead of just getting pictures and small samples. Humans could recall of what happened while they were there and could give a lot more details. Another reason why I think it would be better for humans to go is because humans have never landed on Mars before. It would be a big accomplishment for us to successfully travel to Mars, and find life there for ourselves.
I feel like technological advancement is the best thing for us, and also the worst. It really depends on what kind of technology you are talking about and there are many shades of gray. Technology like facebook is one of those things that are very good and also very bad for us at the same time. Facebook is a great way for people to stay close with family and friends over long distances and is helpful in making new friends in new places. On the other hand it is bad because some people do all of their socializing on facebook, instead of being out in the real world doing it. Many people now are addicted to facebook, and they spend hours and hours a day wasting their life with virtual friendships. Life without facebook is not hard to imagine because just a few years ago I did not have one, the biggest thing for me was going from not having a cell phone to having a cell phone. To be honest, I love having my cell phone, but I really miss the days when I did not have it. I do not remember the last time I used a landline. I miss calling my friends on the phone and seeing what they wanted to do that day. I also miss hanging out with my friends and actually hanging out, instead of texting other people half the time. To me texting got way too popular, but I cannot argue because I text nearly all day every day. I do not think I can imagine what the world will be like in thirty years. I do not think anyone could. There are always so many technological advancements all the time that we have no idea what there will be. If you think about it, thirty years ago if you told people we would have little boxes the size of your palm that could get you any information on a completely virtual database they would call you crazy. Looking at it from that point I do not think that we can even guess what there will be in thirty years.
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