As part of our Carolina Core requirements, all students are required to fulfill a public speaking course. I enrolled in SAEL 200, a course that addressed the nature and relationship of ethics and oral forms of expression in a variety of socio-political contexts. Throughout the semester, I had the opportunity to critically investigate theories of ethics and principals of spoken advocacy, and demonstrate the basic concepts and frameworks of ethical social advocacy through a multitude of speeches. My focus for the semester was the ethical argument surrounding the genetic engineering of human embryos.

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When I was eight years old, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her cancer was not genetic, following the statistic that about 85% of breast cancers occur in women who have no family history of breast cancer due to genetic mutations that happen at random. For arguments sake, I focused my attention on the 5-10% of women whose breast cancer can be linked to gene mutations inherited from one’s mother or father, mostly from mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes (https://www.breastcancer.org/symptoms/understand_bc/statistics). Throughout the semester, I developed my argument that using genetic engineering technology to edit or remove harmful and deadly genomes from human embryos is ethically permissible on the basis of eliminating suffering and bettering one’s quality of life. After watching my mom lose her hair, struggle through chemotherapy and radiation treatments and fight for her life for eight months, I couldn’t understand why anyone would disagree with my stance on the issue.

 

The gene splicing technology that I was advocating for exists, and is currently under thorough examination as to whether or not it should be made legal and practicable in the United States. The basis of the controversial debate stems from each side’s definition of morality. Scientists, medical professionals, and those directly affected by disease are advocating for the legalization and implementation of such technology so that we can reduce human suffering. Opponents of the technology, which include but is not limited to religious groups, human rights activists and concerned parents, argue that editing human embryos is inherently wrong and amounts to playing God. Additionally, I explored related topics such as “designer babies,” the innate dangers present in the natural ways human reproduce, and the legal policies of patents, giving myself a holistic understanding of how to formulate my argument while taking into account the associated moral, ethical, and legal dimensions of the issue.

 

Taking the aforementioned information and my semester’s worth of additional research into consideration, I proposed that we implement a patent system going forward with gene editing technology. From a legal standpoint, because patent rights are only valid for a span of twenty years, this would give policy makers a time extension to create an actual way to regulate and govern genetic engineering technology, without accidentally limiting its potential applications. Unlike most regulated guidelines set by law, a patent can be manipulated and tailored to specific situations and circumstances, allowing for the continual study of genetic engineering, but eliminating the chance of potentially unethical practices. This would allow for medical studies and research to continue, but would minimize the opportunities for this technology to be abused. My proposal suggested the legalization of the technology to eliminate deadly genetic mutations before the embryo came to full term, and also satisfied opposing views that a technology this powerful needed to be heavily regulated to prevent misuse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Like I mentioned in my previous Key Insight, I was an intern at Wells Fargo this past summer. I worked alongside the Wholesale Content Marketing and Strategy team, where I learned about B2B marketing and thought-leadership content creation. The Wholesale Marketing department had three main verticals, Healthcare, Technology, and Women, and their target audience is C-Suite executives. One of my tasks this summer was to research and develop a piece of content that would be appealing to our target market and would showcase what services Wells Fargo could provide their company with. As a financial institution, legal, risk, and compliance are all major factors in developing content due to being a highly regulated industry. When creating content, there are a lot of factors that influence what can be discussed, promoted, or advocated.

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For my project, I collaborated with a woman on our team and participated in weekly calls so that we could discuss the drafts I had sent her and the edits that she had made. I chose to combine our three verticals and focused on creating a wire outline for an infographic about FemTech. FemTech is short for female technology and encompasses the software, diagnostics, products, and services that use technology to improve women’s health. I focused my attention on FemTech startups, the lack of venture capitalist funding, and the growth of the FemTech market over the last five years.  While researching the topic, I discovered a multitude of shocking facts and statistics related to technology and women’s health that I wanted to include because they strengthened my argument about why the FemTech sector has been ignored and underfunded for so long.

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After sending my first draft of my outline, I was praised for the research that I had completed, but was reminded about the presentation of my information. While the data and statistics I’d included did strengthen my argument like I had intended, I had done so in a way that put other groups in a bad light. My commentary on the document below, which is my beyond the classroom artifact, displays my response to the feedback I’d received regarding the way in which I’d presented my points. I had failed to articulate my thoughts in an unbiased way, and did not take into consideration how ethos, pathos, and logos can affect the presentation and credibility of your argument.

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This internship was my first hands-on experience in the business world and it provided me the opportunity to grow both professionally and personally. It was because of this project that I learned the actions that you take to strengthen your own argument can unintentionally damage your image and customer relationships if you do not consider the ethical implications of your thoughts and articulate them accordingly. The purpose of including the data that I did was not to slander anyone, but to show why there was a legitimate problem that needed to be solved. Over the course of my ten weeks, I worked tirelessly on finding strong data and presenting my facts in a respectable manner that drew attention to the problem, the factors causing the issue, and the steps that needed to be taken in order for the FemTech industry to grow, all while checking to make sure I was doing so in an ethical way.