A sentient being, by definition in Webster’s Dictionary, is a being that has the power of feeling or perception.  As humans, we are sentient beings.  Is that the way we characterize an android and a human—the ability to feel?  I believe the answer to that has to be no.  Being a human is more than being sentience. Human beings cannot be created through science and technology.  To do so is playing God and nobody has the right to be God because we are not God.  I believe genetic research is very beneficial as long as it is kept within reason.  Attempting to make human-like androids and machines is taking it too far.

 In the movie Blade Runner, replicants are manufactured organisms designed to carry out work too boring, dangerous, or distasteful for humans.  Eventually, these replicants develop their own emotions, become rebellious, and desire their freedom.  Deckard, a blade runner, has to track down these rebel replicants and retire them—in other words, kill them.

Some people, after watching this movie, sympathize with the replicants because they were slaughtered throughout the movie.  I personally did not sympathize with the replicants.  Replicants are just advanced computers that resemble a human being, and computers are nothing more than machines.  They cannot think on their own unless someone programs them too.  Human beings have the ability to think on their own.  Thought is the glory of mankind, the noblest and most characteristic of our human activities.  Blaise Pascal once stated, “Man is but a reed, the weakest thing in nature.  But he is a thinking reed.”  Thinking makes human beings admirable because we are the only creatures on earth that has that quality.  But what is admirable about a machine?

 In the movie, the replicants were human-like to the point that it is impossible to tell unless you have a Voight-Kampff machine, which is a very advanced form of lie detector that measures contractions of the iris muscle and the presence of invisible airborne particles emitted from the body.  Deckard used this machine on Rachael, a Nexus-7 replicant model with memory implants.  Rachael was so human-like that she herself did not know she was a replicant.  In the movie, three of the replicants came back to Earth in search of their maker.  Roy Batty, one of the replicants, ended up killing Tyrell (the maker) because he did not grant him more life since replicants can only live for four years.

The production of making such android is wrong and stupid.  What kind of genius decided to give these androids a brain so they can think like a human being and have emotions?  This is totally ridiculus.  One of the biggest flaws about humans is that we cannot keep work and personal things separate.  For instance, we go to class and take test, but while taking a test, we have other stuff on our mind so we don't think as clearly and end up not doing so well on the test.  Now, if you want to build a robot (or replicant) that would be useful, it would be logical to not give the robot any emotions or the ability to think like humans.  By this way, it can stick to its task and make everybody happy.

 Taking genetic research to the level of making artificial human beings is ethically wrong.  We are not god and should not try to be him.  In the movie, Dr. Eldon Tyrell, owner of the Tyrell Corporation, is the creator of the replicants.  He tried playing god and ending up being killed by Roy, his own creation.  Bladerunner serves as a warning of how our future is going to be like if we do not restrict genetic engineering.

 I am not trying to impose the idea that genetic research is bad—I’m just say it should not go too far.  Using what is obtained from the human genome project to better ourselves in the future is perfectly fine.  For instance, reorganizing the DNA of fertilized egg to get rid of chronic diseases and allow the baby to survive is a great advancement.  That should be as far as we go; attempting to make human beings is hazardous, as shown in the movie Blade Runner.