Kristina's Essay Review

Kristina did a fantastic job with her essay. The content that she provided definitely assisted with her argument. Her quotes were very well implemented and definitely helped show the major pay gap that occurs between females and men, especially in sports. Her introduction immediately drew me in, specifically with the major difference in pay between the U.S. men’s and the women’s team. Definitely hooks the reader in right away since it is so incredulous to the audience. It provides this wow factor that makes the reader crave for more from her essay, and they definitely won’t be disappointed. She definitely makes a great point about how the media wrongly portrays women when it comes to sports. She definitely makes some strong points about how the media oversexualizes women which could detract from the amount of viewers and supporters that the women could possibly have. Although her essay centered on soccer, I think it would be even more effective if other sports were brought into the equation. What is the pay gap between male and female swimmers for instance? The Olympics would be a great event to see how big the pay gap is between male and females in the different sports represented there. Honestly, her paper does a great job with just having a focus on soccer. I loved how she brought the differences in wages between coaches of male teams and female teams into the equation. It shows that not only are females getting underpaid, but male coaches who teach female teams are also underpaid. All in all, her paper is very well done and I would love to see what she can do with her conclusion paragraph.

Peer Review For Wednesday

            Rachel’s introduction to her paper about the need to implement Gun Control Laws really drew me in. The quote at the beginning definitely sets the stage and shows her audience that action needs to occur. It is very powerful and makes the audience want to fight for these laws so that it could prevent future incidents. It is definitely an effective to way to begin her article. Her essay is riddled with facts that help prove her point that Gun Control Laws need to be enacted. At some points however, I feel that she overloads her readers with these facts, not allowing them to get a chance to breathe. Some of the facts are hard to take in especially when it comes to the specific shootings that have taken place. She definitely utilizes the facts and statistics to her advantage since they are proving that gun control laws need to happen. However, I believe along with these quotes, explanation needs to occur to help show analysis of the quotes. Going in depth about why that quote is specifically important to the enactment of gun control laws could help her points. I do like how she does give insight into her own thoughts and at points she is very persuasive as she intertwines her own points with the quotes she obtains from her sources. Her informational and argumentative tone is definitely well suited for the piece she is writing. I believe she achieves her purpose in trying to persuade her audience to see why gun control laws should be enacted. Her conclusion seems to wrap up her essay far too quickly, but the concluding sentence is very well written and leaves her audience wanting to read more of her essay. Overall, Rachel is definitely on her way to creating a great paper.

            

            Sarah is on her way to making a convincing argument about not texting, or using a cell phone while driving. Her title brings you in because it is a morbid topic, especially when it comes to all of the sad stories that we hear about people texting while driving. Her introduction starts off very well especially with a particularly interesting statistic. It took me aback by how many people actually use their cellphones while driving. One thing that she should fix in her introduction is to not say that “the research paper will try to inform…” She should just ease her audience into it, allowing the paper to flow. She makes a good use of breaking her paper into different sections where she brings up great points and statistics to help move her essay along. One thing that she should include is more analysis of certain facts. She provides a lot of concrete evidence, but doesn’t really delve into its importance to her paper. If she could show why these statistics are important towards her own points, her paper would be much more persuasive towards her audience. Even though she did do a good job of breaking up her paper, I felt like there was a point where her purpose was lost to the audience. It seemed like she changed from telling people to not use cellphones while driving to advocating for it to occur. I think she should try to mix both of these together so that she could show why the benefits don’t outweigh the costs. Although she does do this with her conclusion paragraph, it isn’t enough to bring home her point that texting while driving is dangerous. Other than that, her essay was beautifully written and incorporated a lot of interesting statistics.

Frankenbabies!!!!!!!

Have you ever thought about being able to customize your own offspring? What about specifically deciding the color of their eyes or hair? Well that is a possibility that could happen at some point in the future and starts with the genetic modification of human embryos. Kathy Niakan is one such scientist who is asking the government of England’s fertility regulator for a license to conduct genome editing on embryos. By doing very basic research on the embryos, her team hopes to find why some women lose their baby early on in the cycle of pregnancy. She claims, “The knowledge we acquire will be very important for understanding how a healthy human embryo develops, and this will inform our understanding of the causes of miscarriage. It is not a slippery slope [towards designer babies] because the UK has very tight regulation in this area,” (Sample, Guardian 7).  Well as of now, designer babies are not going to happen anytime soon. There are still far too many tests that need to be done in order to discover how to target specific places in the genetic code. As can be seen, genetic engineering is definitely advancing as the future progresses. Repairing the genetic code seems to be one of the major experiments that is being undertaken by Niakan who is one of the major scientists in this field of study. However, along with the advocates, are the naysayers who believe that this technology could go too far which leads to the question: Is genetically modifying human embryos unethical or could it truly redefine and aid the human race?
            Years ago, the concept of thinking that humans could define what their offspring would look like was far from people’s minds. Now, scientists are able to redefine the future of the human race.  Earlier this year there was a lot of controversy over the concept of three parent babies. Scientists have discovered a way to replace the faulty mitochondrial DNA (mDNA) in a woman with the healthier DNA from a second woman in order for the child to inherit both of the women’s DNA. Then, the father would fertilize the egg (Sample, 2). As of now, scientists do not completely understand the mitochondria which has raised ethical concerns in other scientists. They believe that more research should be conducted on the mitochondria before conducting what could be a dangerous procedure. It could have unforeseen effects on the embryos and people do not like that the baby would have three parents (Knapton, 4). Critics of this method also believe that this process could eventually lead to the dreaded “designer babies.” Dr. David King, the director of the Human Genetics Alert stated that "The techniques are unethical according to basic medical ethics, since their only advantage over standard and safe egg donation is that the mother is genetically related to her child. This cannot justify the unknown risks to the child or the social consequences of allowing human genome modification" (Knapton, 9). Even with this statement, a majority of scientists believe the process should continue since it could lessen the harmful effects that mitochondrial disease has on a family.

Stephanie Saulter, a prominent author who wrote a series of books titled Evolution, offered her insight into the matter. She believes that the counterargument against the mDNA procedure has some merits, but inevitably not enough to stop the procedure. She believes that it is the “next logical step” that could save the lives of thousands from this devastating disease that is passed down genetically (Saulter, 16). Why should people object to a procedure that has the potential to save countless children from early death? Is it because of that word? Potential? Or is it because people are afraid of how far the technology will go? Are these fears worth the prohibition of a procedure that could save lives? Before anything can happen, long term research would need to occur as well as the money to conduct these procedures. As for being able to choose the eye and hair color of a child, it would be extremely expensive to invest time and money into the use of this technology (Saulter, 17).

Along with this comes the topic of diversity. Diversity is a trait that humans have begun to treasure and with ‘designer babies,’ people fear a loss of diversity. Christian Wolfe, who attended Washington & Jefferson University, states “Genetic diversity has a direct relation to the fitness and survivability of various species and populations; as genetic diversity decreases within a population, so does the fitness and survivability of that population” (Wolfe, 2). If designer babies were able to be engineered, then a detrimental effect could happen in the future for the human race. Humans have constantly had to be able to adapt to the environment that they are in, and with genetic engineering, diversity could be lacking in humans. This could completely hinder or even stop the evolutionary process (Shimbo, 3). However, some believe that it is an odd fear since reproductive medicine nowadays is allowing more parents to have children who are their genetic descendants. This would allow for diversity to continue as people wouldn’t be customizing their offspring. (Saulter, 18).