Introduction: My demographics for this poll on genetic engineering in animals were high schoolers, college students, and adults between the ages of 40 and 60. My mode of polling was to ask the questions on Facebook and send the questions to ten people of each demographic. The questions, shown below, go from general to specific. Before I asked people about genetic engineering in animals, I wanted to ask if they thought animals were for fulfilling human needs, as I knew this would affect their answer to later questions. I also figured this would make it easier for me to see any emerging patterns in people’s answers.

I chose high schoolers, college students, and adults between 40 and 60 because I wanted to see how people’s opinions changed from high school to college, and I wanted to see how much of an opinion adults would have on this subject. I was curious as to who had more of an opinion on genetic engineering in animals: high school and college students or adults?

           

Oryx and Crake Blog Poll Questions

1.     Is animals’ main purpose to fulfill human needs?

Yes: 2  high school:0  college:1  adults:1

No: 8  high school:1  college:6   adults:2

2.     Should animals be genetically engineered to better fulfill human needs?

Yes, for medical research: 6  high school:1  college:4  adults:1

No: 5  high school:0  college:3   adults:2

3.     Should animals that have been genetically engineered be let out into the wild?

Yes: 1 high school:0 college:0  adults:1

No: 7 high school:1 college:5 adults:2

4.     Do humans need genetically engineered animals in order to thrive?

Yes: 2 high school:0  college:1  adults:1

No: 8 high school: 1 college:6  adults:2

5.     Is it necessary to have strict laws about genetic engineering in animals?

Yes: 5 high school:0 college:5 adults:0

No: 4 high school:0 college:3 adults:1

Looking at the results, I noticed some patterns. First, most high school and college students said it’s not animals’ main purpose to fulfill human needs. Also, it is very close between college students whether or not animals should be genetically engineered for human needs. This suggests they believe animals should be used to better fulfill human needs through genetic engineering, but this is not their main purpose. Also, across all ages, most people believed genetically engineered animals should not be released to the wild, which suggests most young people and adults are aware of the risks of releasing these animals. It was very close between college students who said yes or no to whether or not there should be strict laws on genetic engineering in animals. This suggests that young people believe genetic engineering in animals has some value, such as in medical research, and strict laws could prevent this.

            Another interesting result I noticed was most college students did not believe humans needed genetically engineered animals in order to thrive. This suggests, at least with this sample of college students, they believe genetic engineering in animals is important, but not a necessity.

            As far as adults, the divide between yes and no for all the questions is almost evenly divided between one yes and two no’s. It suggests adults are more divided on this subject, most likely due to their life experiences. However, each time there was one more no than yes, suggesting they lean toward opposition side when it comes to genetic engineering in animals.

            Overall, for genetic engineering to benefit humans and the necessity of having strict laws for this, the number of yes’s and no’s was very close, with no’s beating the yes’s by one. On all other questions, the no’s had a clear majority. This suggests people believe genetic engineering in animals is important because it has benefits for humans, but they do not think it should be taken to extremes. This means the situation Margaret Atwood describes in Oryx and Crake is very unlikely. Most people, at least according to this survey, would not approve of genetic engineering in animals to the extreme it’s described in the novel with the pigoons and the ChickieNobs. The most likely reason for this is there are many dystopian novels with similar warnings about science as well as news events, and people have taken them seriously, thus making the future described in Oryx and Crake unlikely.