Applying TOK Skills Worksheet: Genetic Engineering

Knowledge Claims extracted from real-life situation

Scientific experiments could potentially have extremely dangerous outcomes.
There is an inherent part of risks in experimentation that we should accept.
Creating new forms of life in a few years when its taken millennia to Nature it is
not reasonable.
Creating new forms of life that resemble humans is like manipulating human lives,
its unethical.
Ways of Knowing
Emotion: How do we relate to a creature that is half human? Half human, half
rights? What does it feel to be human?
Imagination: How far can we go in creating new forms of life? What will the new
possibilities open to us? Can we go too far?
Reason: Evidence shows that scientific progress and innovation can greatly benefit
but also harm people (medical research/weapons) What are the boundaries in
genetic engineering? Who will be the wise men?
Intuition: Some experiments may seem wrong or dangerous intuitively. How far
does intuition play a role in deciding what is wrong or right?
Personal and Shared Knowledge
Personal : My religious values help me distinguish scientific experiments as right or
wrong.
Personal: I have seen animals tortured in lab experiments and I think its too cruel .
Shared : We know that many diseases have been cured after years of
experimentation, genetic engineering is a specific form of experimentation.
Shared: We know that from past experience that genetic engineering can be
dangerous without ethical safeguards (eugenics)
Knowledge Framework (main AOK) How does the Knowledge framework for this AOK help us
analyse the Real Life Situation?
Scope: Scientific experiments are based on hypotheses, outcomes can only be speculated
until sufficient evidence becomes available. Scientists required to demonstrate responsibility
in experiments to avoid dangerous consequences.
Language: Scientific language is precise in order to eliminate ambiguity which might affect
the reasoning process. It can also lack emotion and treat living creatures as objects.
Historical development: Scientific experimentation has a long history of pivotal shifts of
thinking. Animals and even people having no ethical rights.
Methodology: Measurement involves interaction with the world, but this interaction can
change the aspect of the world we are trying to measure.
Links between main AOK and related AOKs:
Ethics: Consequences can be dangerous for the objects of experimentation themselves, how
far can we justify suffering in the name of science?
Religious KS: Most religions are quite suspicious of or condemn scientific experiments that
manipulate human life forms.
Knowledge Questions
1.
To what extent do emotion and imagination play a role in concluding that certain
quests for knowledge are dangerous?
2.
To what extend can scientific progress justify genetic engineering?
3.
To what extend can imagination be used a valid source of hypotheses in science?