“The most urgent problems” have to deal more with ethics than the genetics the Dalai Lama was originally writing about. These problems are explained by him as our relationship between knowledge and power, as well as our responsibility on the flip side. The more knowledge and power we have about something, the more morally responsible we become. Since we would have this knowledge, we should be able to know better about what is and is not morally and ethically wrong in a certain scenario. But as things are advancing faster and faster, the balanced gap between knowledge and responsibility has been becoming much more unbalanced. People are starting to forget about these moral principles in a sense of greed whether it be for money, a breakthrough, or even more knowledge. For example, in the food industry, many companies add many bad substances in their foods to make their consumers want to buy more, but in turn have bad health effects on each person. The companies know exactly what they are doing as well as the implications of it all, but they still choose to continue to add these substances to their foods for more money. With the amount of knowledge that these companies have, you would expect that they would make sure that their customers were happy and healthy. So since the companies are not doing just that, they are in turn morally responsible for the outcomes. One may get excited about what they have learned/ are learning and will do whatever it takes to keep trying at it to discover more; they are not necessarily thinking about the implications in the bigger picture.

A non-specialist does not have an idea of how certain aspects of genetics work. This slight cluelessness can help the person to have more of a non-biased role when thinking ethically about the implications of genetics. A scientist who solely studies genetics could get their mind all clogged up when coming up with new theories and experiments because they only have the future in mind. These people are the ones that will break boundaries even further so that they can make a major breakthrough. But if you were to take someone who specialized in a different area and then replaced the scientist, they could possibly make better judgments than the scientist could. These people could see the implications of what could come out of a certain experiment and push the envelope to the point of bursting.

The role of emotions in ethical thinking for the Dalai Lama is that he feels we should embrace our feelings and emotions, especially when thinking ethically. In his writing, he goes on to say that we must trust our instincts and our initial reactions to certain scenarios. The Dalai Lama believes that we must take our emotions and instincts seriously, they come out of our “basic humanity” within ourselves. We should be able to embrace our emotions in every decision. If we do not, the Dalai Lama fears that we make some horrible decisions that go against all morals and ethics. I feel as though Herzog could argue that it is okay to set your emotions to the side when thinking ethically and morally; this could be the involvement of being in the troubled middle as he discussed. An example he provides is that he is fine with rodents being tested on in order to help to find a cure for cancer. When it comes to a situation like this, having the thought process the Dalai Lama discusses could be confusing. On one hand, it is wrong to test on animals, but on another, it is important to find a cure for cancer since people are dying rapidly from it. What could he say about this? In situations like this, Herzog would say to go against certain instincts and emotions for a greater good.

The Dalai Lama’s view about genetically modified food as a solution to the problems associated with the industrial food production is that he does not seem to agree with using such things in our world and environment. We have absolutely no idea about all the different effects that these genetically modified foods have on not only our bodies but the environment of the world that we live on. Many farmers and producers take the sort of shortcuts such as creating genetically modified foods because in the end it saves and makes them more money. The unforeseen effects of genetically modified foods can be really scary. We have seen many instances of things like this happening, especially in the examples given by the Dalai Lama about medicine. At one point everything may seem fine, things may even seem to be better. But later, it is discovered that something bad or even catastrophic has occurred due to the new experimental thing. I agree with the Dalai Lama, but at the same time, you cannot get anywhere without a little experimentation. I understand why he may be against genetically modified foods, but using the argument of not knowing what will happen in the end could also prove to be the reason why you should take that risk and grow foods such as this anyways. There could turn out to be this huge health benefit to humans that we would never have known about if it were not for just simply trying it out.