TOEFL® essay sample: The disadvantages of using science...

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[b][i]The disadvantages of using science against Nature[/i][/b]

Have you ever wondered whether the advances in science and technology would provoke nature’s need for revenge? Have you ever thought of what might happen if we keep on the exploit what we have, our lands and our bodies? Because I have. I feel that what nature is preparing for us will come out of the blue, exactly when we least expect it. And the cause for this would lie in our actions. And why? Simply because we have no idea what we’re doing while polluting our planet, using chemicals in everything and we are even thinking about modifying our children’s looks and brains. We are pushing our luck with the advances in agriculture, genetics and medicine.

For a start, all humans are so used to using technology and taking antibiotics that I’m not even sure that we could survive without them. For example, children weren’t used to such strong pills ten years ago as they are now, since a very young age. The research that I’ve made into the media shows that genetically improved corn makes the danger of famine in many parts of the world a thing of the past, but do these people realize that such meals don’t provide enough vitamins and thus puts their health at risk? And do they know how a specific body would react to such things? My opinion is that people should consider their interference in agriculture if they don’t want to provoke nature to strike back.

Modifying plants is not the only business of nature with which people mess up. Knowing the way your child will look like when it grows up is to be no longer something extraordinary. But if it becomes a normal thing to take a picture of a star and say that your heir looks like him or her, imagine how simple the child’s life would be, there would be nothing interesting or surprising to happen to its looks. Not only that, imagine what life would be if we all looked like dolls in the Disney shop :). In addition, the smallest and simplest mistake could cause mutations or provoke long-lost inherited diseases in the family tree. It is the same thing with the organs that will be created in laboratories soon- the risk of health ‘problems’ is too high. My research shows that the average lifespan would soon be over eighty years of age. And what will happen if everyone lived up to a thousand years old? The world would be overpopulated and the people who would work wouldn’t be enough to feed those who wouldn’t. And that would be a disaster.

However, medicine is well developed nowadays. A patient who had an organ transplanted is celebrating the tissue’s tenth year of normal function in his body, according to the media. Transplantations make people with an infected organ live normally, but that has its price. First of all, it is very risky to undertake such an operation, but the results might be tremendous. The second threat comes right after the end of the surgeon’s ‘masterpiece’- the danger of inheriting diseases from the owner of the organ. In addition, I don’t think it is ethically correct to allow people to literally sell parts of their bodies. At least not for such prices like $2000, which is how much a kidney costs in Turkey. What’s more, we all know what kinds of risks cosmetic surgery involves- for example, if you make your lips bigger, the substance might decide to change its position in a year and move to your cheek.

To sum up, scientists’ ability to make nature work for them has had clear benefits. Of course some people do question the ethics of certain experiments, and others demand to know just how far we are prepared to go with scientific changes. Nevertheless, the benefits to both individuals and the whole of society outweight these concerns, but can’t outweight what the future could bring to us as a revenge for playing with nature.