On one side, the bio-engineering industry promises a utopian world of bountiful food, where sickness and human imperfections are a thing of the past. On the other side is mounting evidence of biological monstrosities that threaten to turn the Earth into a scene from the horror movie "The Island of Dr. Moreau."
Genetic engineering differs from the ancient technique of artificial selection in that the manipulation of genetic material occurs in a manner that is totally unnatural. It may involve borrowed heritable genetic material external to the organism, or the targeting of specific genes for elimination.
Cloning and stem cell research are related technologies that may encompass genetic engineering, and the latest discipline is synthetic biology that seeks to introduce uniquely man-made materials into a genetic framework.
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