Analyzing My Text's Cultural Setting 

The culture which surrounds an author when he or she is writing is extremely influential on the work. Below is an analysis of the cultural setting of my text, found here. 

• The article specified above was published to the Huffington Post in February of 2013. The author of the article is from New York City and she is writing about things regarding current times due to the fact that genetic engineering is a relatively new concept. She also has worked at Rockefeller University in the past. 
• New York City is a very fast paced and culturally diverse location in the United States. The city and the majority of the area around it is one of the more accepting cities in the United States with various socioeconomic statuses, as well as cultural attitudes. This would expect to be reflected in the article in terms of encouraging the ban of genetic engineering because Parry did write the article in the middle of such a Democratic state. The author definitely does give great points to show why this ban is appropriate but her overall stance is not obvious. 
• The text does give specific references to people potentially abusing the system of genetic engineering and using it for "designer babies" rather than for more reasonable reasons such as decreasing possibility of passing on a disease or chromosomal abnormality. 
• The text appears neither supportive nor critical of these beliefs. The author never outright says whether or not she agrees with these notions but she does focus the main part of the work on the more positive aspects of genetic engineering such as decreasing likelihood of inheriting diseases. Additionally at the end of the work she does state that the opponents to the ban of genetic engineering won the debate. 

G, Vlad. "Genetic Engineering"5/7/10 via Flickr. Creative Commons Attribution