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role of biomedical engineers essay
role of biomedical engineers essay
role of biomedical engineers essay
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Suppose you are at the hospital and notice a patient sitting outside his doctor’s office. The painful expression on his face shows that he had just received dreadful news. His doctor had informed that the HIV virus that was present in his cells had mutated into AIDS and his life is in serious danger. There is one procedure that could perhaps save his life. However, this method has never been tested on humans. This operation involves nanoparticles killing the virus and saving the man’s life. Biomedical engineers who discovered this process are convinced that this process can be extremely painful for the patient since the patient is not allowed to be under anesthesia. Nevertheless, doctor’s are not assured whether the treatment could save or …show more content…
With the goal of improving the quality and effectiveness of patient care, biomedical engineers design instruments, devices, and software. In spite of the power biomedical engineers carry, they are also left with a mountain of challenges. To overcome to the problem plenty of biomedical engineers are faced with today, Robert Langer, an American engineer and an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, stated that certain methods are unacceptable owing to the fact that they are inhumane. Langer and his team were working on polymers that could deliver DNA as efficiently as viruses. The only problem with this procedure was that the viruses may have dangerous side effects and have been responsible for deaths in some gene-therapy trials. “So far, the problem has been that such "synthetic vectors" have been far less efficient in carrying out the delivery,” Langer states, “But in early tests. . . some polymers have been as effective at delivering the DNA strands to their target as the viruses, but with 100 times less toxicity” (Par. 9). Langer and his team were able to maneuver different techniques to avoid undesirable procedures so they may be tolerable to the
Over 20 years after the proclamation of these specific ethical guidelines, we are introduced to the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Human Gene Therapy’s study on a delivery mechanism for gene therapy that resulted in the death of an 18 year old research subject Jesse Gelsinger. Gelsinger suffered from partial OTC (ornithine transcarbamylase) deficiency caused by a defective single gene (Obasogie, 2009).
The age of genetic technology has arrived. Thanks to genetic technological advancements, medical practitioners, with the help of genetic profiling, will be able to better diagnose patients and design individual tailored treatments; doctors will be able to discern which medications and treatments will be most beneficial and produce the fewest adverse side effects. Rationally designed vaccines have been created to provide optimal protection against infections. Food scientists have hopes of genetically altering crops to increase food production, and therefore mitigate global hunger. Law enforcement officers find that their job is made easier through the advancement of forensics; forensics is yet another contribution of genetic technology. Doctors have the ability to identify “high-risk” babies before they are born, which enables them to be better prepared in the delivery room. Additionally, oncologists are able to improve survival rates of cancer patients by administering genetically engineered changes in malignant tumors; these changes result in an increased immune response by the individual. With more than fifty years of research, and billions of dollars, scientists have uncovered methods to improve and prolong human life and the possibilities offered by gene therapy and genetic technology are increasing daily.
... fight the disease. It is crucial that regulation be a necessary component of gene therapy research and applications. In hopes that the government can regulate and can receive this treatment, not restricting it to people that has serious genetic diseases. Gene therapy will change the field of medicine from what it is today. As scientist discovers more genes and their functions, the potential of this treatment is limitless. Though gene therapy is an auspicious treatment choice for numerous diseases (including inherited disorders, some types of cancer, and certain viral infections), the procedure remains precarious and is still under study to make sure that it will be safe and effective. Thus government regulators and scientist must take a lead role in adopting a practical approach to address these issues and determining the correct procedures for dealing with them.
Gene therapy, a relatively new innovention, is becoming popular across the country. Gene therapy modifies a part of an organism, whereas cloning creates an entirely recreated organism. This technique can be conducted in vivo in either somatic or germ cells. The process is essentially aimed at fixing a genetic disorder or disease by inserting a functional gene to replace the faulty one (Houdebine 2003). Many methods to conduct a gene transfer have been tested. The two types are in vivo and in vitro. Transferring genes in vivo means placing the functional genes directly into the target tissue; while vitro transfers creates the genes outside of the body, in Petri dishes. Vitro is an expensive process that r...
In September 14, 1990, an operation, which is called gene therapy, was performed successfully at the National Institutes of Health in the United States. The operation was only a temporary success because many problems have emerged since then. Gene therapy is a remedy that introduces genes to target cells and replaces defective genes in order to cure the diseases which cannot be cured by traditional medicines. Although gene therapy gives someone who is born with a genetic disease or who suffers cancer a permanent chance of being cured, it is high-risk and sometimes unethical because the failure rate is extremely high and issues like how “good” and “bad” uses of gene therapy can be distinguished still haven’t been answered satisfactorily.
...y into a cell it usually will not function the desired way. Instead, a carrier called a vector is genetically engineered to deliver the gene. Certain viruses are often used as vectors because they can deliver the new gene by infecting the cell. The viruses are modified so they can’t cause disease and will not be fought off by the patient’s immune system. The vector can be injected or given by IV directly into a specific place in the patient’s body. The vector can also be introduced after , a sample of the patient’s cells are removed and exposed to the vector in a lab. The cells with the vector are then returned to the patient.
For over 100 years the biomedical model has dominated Western medicine. Its impact has been broad and profound, increasing life expectancy and emphasizing biologic approaches to health care and health research. The biomedical model of illness that excludes psychological and social factors and includes only biologic factors in an attempt to understand a person’s medical illness or disorder; putting an exclusive focus on disease. This model is now found to be inadequate because it “leaves no room within this framework for the social, psychological and behavioral dimensions of illness. The biomedical model is only a small component in this larger framework. Within this model, a great focus in put on medication and it
Wilmoth Lerner. 4th ed. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Student Resources in Context. Web. 12 Mar. 2014.
Gene therapy is a method used by doctors that ‘uses genes as medicine’. It repairs faulty or damaged gene copies by transferring a therapeutic or working gene into specific parts of faulty gene copy. This means that gene therapy can be used to replace a faulty gene or to introduce a new gene whose function is to modify the clinical course of a condition or to cure a problem in the gene (Refer to image 2). Image 1 shows how gene therapy is completed using an adenovirus vector while image 2 explains the method of gene therapy and shows how cells are removed, altered and injected back into the patient. Gene therapy has potential to treat and cure many medical conditions such as various types of cancer, degenerative diseases and viral infections such as AIDS. Research into gene therapy still needs to be done before this approach to the treatment of certain conditions will realise its full potential. Trials are being conducted in the United States and Europe and a modest number initiated in other countries, including Australia. The majority of these trials are focussing on treating acquired conditions such as cancer (European Society of Gene & Cell therapy, 2011).
Genetic engineering is the modification of an organism’s genetic composition by artificial means, often involving the transfer of specific traits, or genes, from one organism into a plant or animal of an entirely different species. Genetic engineering offers the promise of such things as cures for disease and the creation of a better world. However, although some people believe that humans will be able to use the powers given by new biotechnologies to create an enlightened society, it is more likely that they will be used for destructive purposes. “If genetic engineers can discover how to redesign human beings, the result will be people with the worst characteristics of humanity. At that point, equipped with the new powers conferred by biotechnology, we will be what [Russian Communist leader Vladimir] Lenin could only dream of becoming—engineers of souls (Gray).” “Humanity will be unable to reach a global consensus on the uses of genetic engineering, and the development of science and technology will continue to be controlled by economic and military interests, as they have been throughout history. The insidious weapons created through biotechnology will be used in wars of unimaginable brutality (Gray).”
Although humans have altered the genomes of species for thousands of years through artificial selection and other non-scientific means, the field of genetic engineering as we now know it did not begin until 1944 when DNA was first identified as the carrier of genetic information by Oswald Avery Colin McLeod and Maclyn McCarty (Stem Cell Research). In the following decades two more important discoveries occurred, first the 1953 discovery of the structure of DNA, by Watson and Crick, and next the 1973 discovery by Cohen and Boyer of a recombinant DNA technique which allowed the successful transfer of DNA into another organism. A year later Rudolf Jaenisch created the world’s first transgenic animal by introducing foreign DNA into a mouse embryo, an experiment that would set the stage for modern genetic engineering (Stem Cell Research). The commercialization of genetic engineering began largely in 1976 wh...
The controversy of these issues stems from the immense potential in genetic sciences for both positive use and harmful misuse. Though the questions and fears of critics reflect the wisdom of caution, the potentially unlimited benefits mandate that we pursue these technologies.
The purpose of this document is to learn about the new and exciting developments in the biotech industry. Besides lives being effected, the companies and the markets in which they reside will be as well. It’s vitally important to learn about the new technologies since there is a very good chance that million’s of others, and mostly likely yours truly will ingest a new drug, or have a new procedure preformed.
The birth of genetic engineering and recombinant DNA began in Stanford University, in the year 1970 (Hein). Biochemistry and medicine researchers were pursuing separate research pathways, yet these pathways converged to form what is now known as biotechnology (Hein). The biochemistry department was, at the time, focusing on an animal virus, and found a method of slicing DNA so cleanly that it would reform and go on to infect other cells. (Hein) The medical department focused on bacteria and developed a microscopic molecular messenger, that could not only carry a foreign “blueprint”, or message, but could also get the bacteria to read and copy the information. (Hein) One concept is needed to understand what happened at Stanford: how a bacterial “factory” turns “on” or “off”. (Hein) When a cell is dividing or producing a protein, it uses promoters (“on switches”) to start the process and terminators (“off switches”) to stop the process. (Hein) To form proteins, promoters and terminators are used to tell where the protein begins and where it ends. (Hein) In 1972 Herbert Boyer, a biochemist, provided Stanford with a bacterial enzyme called Eco R1. (Hein) This enzyme is used by bacteria to defend themselves against bacteriophages, or bacterial viruses. (Hein) The biochemistry department used this enzyme as a “molecular scalpel”, to cut a monkey virus called SV40. (Hein) What the Stanford researchers observed was that, when they did this, the virus reformed at the cleaved site in a circular manner. It later went on to infect other cells as if nothing had happened. (Hein) This proved that EcoR1 could cut the bonding sites on two different DNA strands, which could be combined using the “sticky ends” at the sites. (Hein). The contribution towards genetic engineering from the biochemistry department was the observations of EcoR1’s cleavage of
One of the biggest concerns involved in gene therapy in humans is the lack of knowledge and the possibility for consequences later on or i...