Analyzing My Text's Cultural Setting

I have chosen a new article to analyze because it is a source that provides a more opinionated and argumentative basis. This article is called Extremely Hopefully and Incredibly Freaked Out: How We Feel About Designer Babies.  

"Mood Swing." 1 Oct. 2012 via Wikipedia 
Commons. Creative Commons.

Author:
-Nick Stockton
-lives in San Francisco, California

Article:
-published May 4th, 2015 on Slate
-Slate is based in NYC, other office in Washington DC

Important dates in article: 

-April 18, 2105- Chinese scientist edit genes of first fertilized egg

-April 29, 2015- National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced they would not fund for scientists playing with human DNA. 

1. What values, ideas, norms, beliefs, even laws of the culture play an important role in the text?

• Ethical values play a role in this text, as they do in any science technology that is unnatural. People are afraid of the consequences of genetic editing and if the technology will be misused, but they are also hopeful that the technology with get rid of many heritable diseases. The text places an important role on the public in that it needs to be a norm that the public is fully educated on the technology and aware of the consequences. 

2. Does the text address these cultural values, beliefs, etc., directly or indirectly?

• The text addresses the ethical concern indirectly, because the general public is not considering ethics as a major concern of the genetic editing. The concern is what effect changes to one's genes with have on future generations, and if the editing is a sure process. The fear and hope that the text expresses is done directly. For example, the Stockton writes, "Precisely engineered prodigy have been a big fear," and "... the hope of eradicating thousands of diseases." The norm that the text directly addresses are that the public is well-informed at that the researchers have done the necessary work. Stockton states,"The public needs to be educated on consequences... [the citizens and government] will make their rules about gene editing without thinking things through."

3. What is the relationship of the text to the values, beliefs, etc.?

• The text is looking to encourage people to have the emotions of fear and hope as this new technology takes shape. The author communicates the importance of being educated about the topic so that the right steps and procedures are taken to address genetic editing. The author is critical of people that only get information from news and social media because it is very unreliable. Lastly, Stockton emphasizes the importance of genetic editing not being properly recognized to policy makers who don't have scientific knowledge.