Synthèse "idea of progress"

Sujet du devoir

Bonjour !
J'ai rédigé la notion concernant le thème "idée de progrès" que je présenterai pour le bac dans quelques semaines.
Pouvez-vous me dire si celle-ci contient des fautes? Si c'est le cas pouvez-vous m'aider à les corriger?

Où j'en suis dans mon devoir

            I am going to talk about the idea of Progress. First of all I would like to give a definition of this notion: the progress can be defined as a movement towards more modern conditions. There are three different kinds of progress: scientific progress, technological progress and social progress.
            We are going focus on scientific progress. Therefore we are going to wonder what effects this progress have on our society.
            Firstly it comes to deal with the different positive aspects of scientific progress resting on two articles, one from CBS News and the second one from USA Today. Then we will examine in what extent this progress may be harmful for mankind. In order to illustrate my words I will use a report untitled India’s girl go missing as well as a cartoon labeled “Clones are Us”.

I/The advantages of scientific progress

            Scientific progress is meant to make the world a better place. Cloning is one of the aspects of scientific progress supposed to bring an improvement of people’s conditions. Cloning is a popular topic these days in science. For now we already have Dolly, the world's first cloned animal. According to CBS News Health Correspondent Dr. Senay scientists are now fast approaching the day that human cloning will be possible.
For couples who desperately want a child, but can't conceive because of infertility, human cloning could be the way for them to have a family.
It is estimated that there are 12 million infertile Americans and that the majority cannot be helped by any current method of assisted reproduction to have a baby that is biologically theirs. Therefore some say cloning would be a cure for infertility.
This point of view is shared by Anne and Bob, a sterile couple who tried in vitro fertilization to conceive a child. Nevertheless Anne miscarried and they were devastated. Doctors then told them they would never have their own children.
In the interview they gave to CBS News they stressed the fact that they have thought about adoption, but they can't let go of the desire to have child that would be their biological one. Bob and Anne conclude their interview by confessing that they would like to be able to consider cloning as an option if it technically worked.
            While scientists are still working on human cloning in order to offer sterile couples the possibility to conceive their own child they have already managed to develop the pre implantation genetic diagnosis (also called PGD). PGD is a technique using in vitro fertilization to ensure that a baby doesn’t possess a known genetic defect. After genetic analysis of the embryos so formed, only those free of defect are implanted in the mother's womb. This progress enables to save people’s life.Let’s take the example of Molly Nash, the American teenager who represents the human answer to the debate over PGD that made headlines a decade ago. She is the subject of an article from USA Today that we studied. In Molly’s case her parents turned to PGD to pick out the embryo implanted to give birth to her brother, Adam, in an effort to save Molly’s life. Molly was cured from of a rare illness thanks to a bone marrow transplant from her brother Adam. Now 9 Adam is the first reported case of a baby selected as an embryo in a fertility lab for birth because his immune system characteristics made him an ideal transplant candidate for his sister.

II/ Some of the Drawbacks generated by scientific progress

            Let’s now deal with the drawbacks generated by scientific progress. In the case of human cloning this scientific progress would led to the standardization of humanity. Indeed if all men were identical, society would lack diversity. That’s what the cartoon entitled “Clones R us” is meant to denounce. This cartoon represents a virtual clone factory that offers genetic services for today’s consumers such as scanning DNA, duplicating it, producing an embryo and delivering it to your house. Clones R us is an allusion to the famous toy store “Toys are Us”. The cartoon represents four identical men on a conveyor belt. All of them are muscular, tanned, squared-jawed and forward facing. However in the middle of them an odd man out his standing. This one is smaller than the others, he has no muscle, looks pale and is thin. The defective clone is about to be lifted by the tongs that will drop him in the skip labeled “rejects”. As the defective clone doesn’t correspond to a physical ideal he is considered as a mistake. The cartoonist expresses the fact that if human cloning existed it would lead to dehumanization. The cartoon alludes to Eugenics, a science that studies method of improving the genetic composition of the human race by selective breeding. According to what we have just said Eugenics can be either positive or negative, depending on how you use it.
            On the other hand the report untitled India’s girl go missing teaches us that there are twice as many boys as girls in India, a fact which isn’t due to a coincidence. India is becoming an increasingly male-dominated society because families are desperate for sons as they are financially more attractive because there is still exist an Indian practice which consists of the bride’s family paying a dowry to the groom’s family before their wedding. As a result there is a rising number of gender selected abortions.
In India, sex-selective abortions and finding out the sex of a baby before birth are illegal. However every day, patients are willing to do anything to construct a family with more boys than girls. Knowing that PGD enables to choose the sex of the baby let’s imagine what India would become if this country got the access to PGD. There would no longer be women in India. As a result people could no longer procreate. It would be a great issue for India.

            As a conclusion scientific progress can both allow to better conditions nor causes issues in society. Indeed, although human cloning would give sterile couples the opportunity to have a biological child it would also represent a threat to humanity because it would become uncontrollable and it would be the risk that the world would lost its diversity.
The same way, there are positive and negative aspects of PGD. Indeed this method enables to save people’s life however if it was developed in some countries such as India it would result in the disappearance of women in society.