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Bleu Rively
Padgett
ILA #2
September 8 2016
US Perception of Biomedical Enhancing
Science is ever-changing, evolving little by little through each and every contribution.
Certain regions of the scientific world come under heavy scrutinizing. The world of
biotechnology is an area of great discussion. The further advancement of biotechnology can be
accelerated or hindered by public opinion. My question is What is US Perception of Biomedical
Enhancing? The article titled U.S. Public Wary of Biomedical Technologies to Enhance
Human Abilities provides detailed insight as to what Americans think about new
biotechnology. The article provides several distinct categories of biotechnology as
topics of inquiry for their American survey participants. This allows the reader to
draw relationships between what the American public believes is a proper use of
biomedical resources. The addition of multiple types of biotechnology provides the
reader a broader scope of what bio-enhancing includes. Below is a general overview
of American perception of different types of biomedical enhancing technology:

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The first detail I noticed was that the graph was separated into three distinct groups.
Within each group I noticed two different colored bars. Above each bars were numbers
indicating a quantity. Upon further examination I see that this graph represents American
enthusiasm. The title of the graph indicates that the American public is concerned about bio
enhancing innovations. In order to confirm the accuracy of the title I consulted the actual content
of the graph and saw that the worried percentage, represented by the orange bars, is significantly
higher than the enthusiastic column, represented by the blue bars. This phenomenon is the same
within each separate column. I liked the straightforwardness of the graph. The data is represented
in simple bar graph form without any unnecessary numbers or representations. I like that the
graph is separated into three distinct sections instead of grouped together in one large column.
This gives the viewer a better understanding that the data was collected based on several
different questions as opposed to one ultimatum question. One aspect I would change would be
to include something indicating the outliers who gave other responses or who did not answer at
all so as to represent every piece of data collected. I would like to see the somewhat and
very legend as a separate entity. When thrown on one of the bars, it could be confused and

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applied to only that bar when in fact it applies to all of the bars within the graph. One more thing
I would do to improve the graph would be to include percentage symbols on every one of the
quantities to apply consistency to the graph.

Works Cited
http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/07/26/u-s-public-wary-of-biomedical-technologies-to-enhancehuman-abilities/

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