Navigating the Ethical Landscape of Biotechnological Animal Engineering and Experimentation
Biotechnology is a fascinating field. Not only is it the perfect amalgamation of biology and technology — the best of both worlds, but it is also filled with brimming uncertainty and a potential for growth. My love for Biotechnology originated from science fiction. As a biology major who loves to read, what could be a better combination? Of course, there are the classics such as Frankenstein and Dune, but recently, the genre of science fiction has given rise to many new subgenres due to the advent of new and innovative technologies such as Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (otherwise known as ‘CRISPR’), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and nanotechnology. One subgenre that I have been exploring recently, thanks to a very interesting elective I took last semester (Literature and Animals), is biotechnological animal engineering and experimentation, or in other words, the modification of animals for human use.
It is no secret that animals are forced to serve capitalistic society by subjecting them to brutal experimentation and robbing them of their agency. I will discuss how some animals are treated as pets or “accessories for human enjoyment or as sources of entertainment”¹ (such as cats and dogs), while others (such as chimpanzees and rats) are subject to brutal…
