Gucci Guwhop 6'4 5th Grader

By
Yolando S.
Kevin R.
Period 7

So let us give you a quick background information about GENOTYPING. Genotyping is basically about being able to know what you will get in the upcoming future. The ability to know if you are going to have a disease in  a few days/months/years. It could be anything just like cancer. “Developments in genotyping over the last six months alone have identified gene variants that can predict predispositions for cancer, hepatitis, ADHD, cardiovascular disease, anxiety, cervical cancer, alcohol dependency, Alzheimer's disease, mental retardation, longevity, multiple sclerosis Parkinson's disease, psychosis, migraine, stroke, heart attack, financial risk taking, obesity, suicide smoking, and, depression.”

Genotyping sounds like a good thing, right? No, it could potentially hit you Emotionally. Let us give you a real life situation. You are a parent and you just got your baby. You let it get genotyped and the doctor said "Your baby will have Cervical Cancer at the age of 8..." How will you act? You might get depressed as a parent because that your baby! You love your kid. Now you are going to be over protective, your going to restrict your child to do what a normal child can do. In addition, once your child finds out that he will have a disease, he/she will think completely different. He/she might start thinking about his future not being good caused by that disease.



But you can always do something about and that's the good thing about Genotyping. It gives you the ability to cure or do something about the disease. You can go through therapies and get your disease cured, if possible. You will be more prepared to your upcoming problems. It gives you time to think about what you will do about your life, what you want to do, and if you are gonna let it drag you down. The statement below will explain that it is not always caused by your genes, it could be the environment you are around. "As researchers make progress in elucidating the roles of specific genes that contribute to the risk of alcohol dependence, they also need to understand how the interplay between genetic and environmental risk factors increases risk. The term “genotype x environment (GxE) interaction effect” refers both to the modification of genetic risk factors by environmental risk and protective factors and to the role of specific genetic risk factors in determining individual differences in vulnerability to environmental risk factors. Understanding the contributions of GxE interaction effects to the risk for and development of alcohol dependence and coexisting disorders is of paramount importance. These GxE interaction effects can be determined by appropriately designed family and molecular epidemiological studies, such as studies of children of twins and prospective family studies." 

Genotyping is not 100% accurate. According to Nature.com “While blood group genotyping is becoming increasingly used in many areas of transfusion medicine, typing errors have been documented.” The studies of Genotyping has not been develop properly yet, there has been a lot errors through out the sequencing process. The tips of the tree are largely based on SNPs discovered from only 17 genomic sequences, resulting in Phylogenetic discovery bias. Phylogentic Tree is the process of showing relationship of other biological elements/species.



Is Genotyping Moral? Or Immoral? Here's our take on it.

This is immoral due to the fact of putting the child through the fear of knowing what will come to them and putting the parents on full alarm of the diseases it has been diagnosed with. It would be better to just see the effects come through their life. Instead of always living in constant fear of knowing what will come to them. By just having the free mind of just going with the flow of events in one’s life. This doesn’t affect me since my partner and I are already teens. If I did get Genotyped when I was a baby, then I would hate having to live with the conditions that would come to me in my life.