Week 12, Chapter 9 -- Starting Assumptions Course home | Weekly schedule | Announcements | Instructor Info | Desire2Learn | MasteringBiology® | Honor Code | FAQs | HELP!

Instructions:

Part 1:

Read through the questions below. Write a paragraph, 150 words minimum, in response to one or more of the questions below that interest you. Use D2L's spell checker or your word processor software to spell check your paragraph. (The latter will give you a word count as well.) Proofread it yourself too, because spell checkers don't catch everything. When you are satisfied, post your completed paragraph in the Starting Assumptions forum for this week at the D2L discussion board.

Part 2:

Respond to the Starting Assumptions posts of at least two other students. (If you are the first or second person to post, you will have to check back later to complete this part of the assignment).

• Just as you spell checked and proofread your original post, you should do the same for your responses.
• Please respond to posts with 0 responses first; once every post has at least one response, you are free to choose any post to respond to.
• When you respond, please use the name of the student you are responding to. That is, say "Hi Jessica" or "Hi Paul" so that you can get used to the names of the people in class. (You can find a list of "real" names and preferred names posted on D2L).
• What constitutes a substantive response? This means that you have read and thought about the original post, and that after some reflection, you are extending one or more of the thoughts in the original post or offering an additional perspective as you might in a good conversation. It is not enough to say simply "nice job," "I liked that," "I think you're right about XXXX," "I disagree," etc. It is OK to disagree or agree, but the goal is to thoughtfully add something else interesting and new related to the content of the original post. At a minimum this should be at least 50 words, and 50-100 is preferable. Check out this page for more on the topic of good and bad responses.

After you have posted your paragraph and responded to two other students, go to Desire2Learn and complete the Gradebook Declaration for this week's Starting Assumptions assignment. (Do not declare that you have completed these assignments until AFTER you have made your posts. Your Gradebook Declaration is subject to the Honor Code.)

Here are the questions to get you started:

• Do you ever eat genetically engineered food? How do you know?
• If you could genetically engineer any organism to have whatever properties you desired, what would they be?
• Can you think of any harm to human health or the environment that could result from genetic engineering?
• Do you pay attention to news stories about cloning and/or stem cells? Why or why not?
• Researchers are beginning to use stem cells and gene therapy to treat certain genetic diseases (here's an example of an article on the topic). Do you have any objections to this type of research? Does it matter to you if the stem cells are derived from embryos or adults?
• In general, what do you think of the issue of cloning for plants, non-human animals, and humans?
• If cloning of farm animals were to become widespread, how likely would you be to buy meat, milk, and eggs from cloned animals? If cloned animals are indistinguishable from other farm animals, would you want some sort of label on cloned animal products? Does it change your opinion to know that many plants are propagated asexually -- that is, they are cloned?
• Who do you think should decide whether or not human cloning is ethical?
• What do you see as the main benefits and risks associated with cloning humans?
• Have you read Oryx and Crake, a book by Margaret Atwood in which a new race of humans is cloned and genetically engineered hybrid animals roam the world? If so, what did you think about it? Did the uses of DNA technology seem plausible to you?
• Private umbilical cord banking companies (e.g., ViaCord) distribute pamphlets to expectant mothers, offering to arrange for umbilical cord blood to be collected at the child’s birth and stored. They describe a long list of disorders that might eventually be treated with the stored stem cells, although few have actually been successfully treated in this way. Under the circumstances, would you consider paying a few thousand dollars to store your own child’s cord blood? What other information would you need before deciding whether to bank the blood?
• Do you pay attention to news stories about the human genome sequence or newly discovered human genes? Why or why not?
• A company once claimed to test for gene mutations associated with bipolar disorder (see http://www.webmd.com/bipolar-disorder/features/at-home-bipolar-test-help-or-hindrance for info). One of the gene variations shows up in 1% of people unaffected by the disorder but in 3% of those affected; another shows up in 7% of unaffected people but 15% of those who have the disorder. With these odds, would you pay $399 for the test? How would you use the results of such a test?
  

Contemporary Issues in Biology -- BIOL 1003 Mariëlle H. Hoefnagels, Ph.D. © 2004-2015. biology1003 at OU dot edu (at = @, dot =.) Last Updated August 5, 2014 11:02 PM