Human Gene Therapy

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Recommended: issues surrounding gene therapy

Human Gene Therapy

Human gene therapy is a fairly new study in the biology and medical fields. The value of gene therapy extends from curing horrible genetic diseases, to enhancing our bodies physical appearance, and to being a new drug delivery system (1). The results from gene therapy seem almost limitless once it becomes common practice, but for right now there are still some technical aspects to overcome. Gene therapy is also a highly controversial topic in some aspects.

One of the major goals of gene therapy, and could be the most important, is replacing defective or missing genes with healthy ones. The possibility of eradicating genetic disease and giving someone a normal life is inspiring. There are a couple options available for replacing the missing or defective genes in the cells; one way is using a disabled virus or a retrovirus to implant the good gene into the cells. There are some problems using a virus when it comes to replacing many genes, and one of the recent techniques to overcome this is using a man-made chromosome. The chromosome, called human artificial chromosome, is duplicated and passed along just like a normal one (5).

The first disease that was approved for gene therapy was ADA deficiency, in which the body lacks production of adenosine deaminase. Adenosine deaminase is important for the proper function of the immune system; people who lack this enzyme have a poor immune response to disease and normally die within the first few years of life (1). The procedure used to correct this disease was to make regular infusions of the patients own genetically corrected T-lymphocytes (1). First the lymphocytes were taken from the patients and encouraged to grow using a disabled mouse retrovirus as a vect...

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...o make the perfect child. After all the grass is always greener on the other side, and even super models have flaws they would like to correct. All people, even those who are disabled in some way, have something to offer whether it’s the contributions of an Einstein or the smile a friendly disabled person gave you that allowed you to remember how to feel as a human.

Bibliography

1. National Cancer Institute, Questions and answers about gene therapy. Obtained from the WWW 11/2/98: http://www.cancernet.nci.nih.gov/clinpd

2. Goldberg, Jeff. A head full of hope. Discover April 1998, v19, n4, p70

3. Miller, Henry I. Gene therapy for enhancement. The Lancet July 30,1994, v344, n8918, p316

4. Radford, Tim. Designing the next generation? World Press Review March 1994, v41, n3, p22

5. Kher, Unmesh. A man-made chromosome. Discover January 1998, v 18, n1, p40

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