Genetics, or the science of genes, seems to be the future of modern medicine, and genetic research keeps gaining ground, but together with the great benefits and cures it can bring, genetic research poses a lot of moral and ethical problems, and it has been said that it could even threaten our civil rights and liberties.



If genetic research continues to develop, parents will be able to have exactly the children they want, and they could plan his life even before his birth. And is this 'right'?Other thing that genetic research could lead to is genetic discrimination - already a number of people weren't employed or assured because of negative genetic predictions. Nowadays, because due to genetic research employers, students and insurance companies can perform tests on their subject in little time, so genetic discrimination can be looked at as a problem. And it must also be said that these tests are not too precise, they have their limits, and they can't predict for sure if a mutation of the genes will occur, or at what moment in life it will happen. Furhermore, the tests can be influenced by the ienvironment. Although genetic testing is not too precise yet, there were a few discriminations done on genetic base until now.

For example, a boy's insurance was denied because it was found in his genes that he has a predisposition to heart-attacks. Also, the insurance of a 20-year old man was rejected because he had a gene for Huntington's brain disease, although he was perfectly healthy.

So, further discoveries in genetic research can do a lot for medicine, but they can also lead to loss of privacy and discrimination. Today, these last consequences of the development of genetic research are neglected, and the public is quite thrilled by the new discoveries genetic research and genetic engineering brings to light.But only time will surely tell what will happen in the new and mysterious domain of genetic research