Genetic Engineering is Good? Why?

he first major product of genetic engineering was human insulin.
Insulin is a protein that acts as a hormone to stimulate uptake of
blood sugar into tissues, such as the liver and the muscles. In
diabetes, people don’t make insulin. Previously, insulin came from
slaughtered animals. The insulin protein has 51 amino-acids. The
insulin from slaughtered animals is similar to human insulin, but very
often is one or two amino-acids different. It still has the same
function, but the human immune system will recognize these one or two
differences. So, in a significant number of diabetics, when taking
non-human insulin, their immune system reacts against it.

Here, what we need is human insulin. Insulin is made in very small
amounts. So, the only way to get this in reasonable amounts is by
amplifying the expression of genes for insulin in recombinant DNA.

At City of Hope Medical Center in California, Keiichi Itakura went
into the chemistry lab and made the insulin gene. It wasn’t even then
a big deal to make it. Itakura’s colleague, Art Riggs, took this gene
and put it into an expression vector, right next to a promoter. The
expression vector now had the gene and a marker. The expression vector
was then put into bacteria, and the bacteria expressed human insulin.
This is about 7 or 8 years after the first emergence of recombinant
DNA technology.

The insulin then was extracted, sent to a drug company, and then to
physicians. This is the source of all insulin now used to treat type 1
diabetics. This is really the great example of a genetically
engineered medication.

Another example is the blood-clotting protein that is missing in
hemophilia. This blood-clotting protein can be supplied with genetic
engineering. People no longer die of hemophilia thanks to genetic
engineering. So, here we have two clear benefits of genetic
engineering.

Article from: http://human-genetics-blog.blogspot.sg/2010/01/benefits-of-genetic-engineering.html