Pros and Cons of Gene Therapy

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Pros and Cons of Gene Therapy

Gene therapy is thought of by some people as an terrific discovery that could greatly improve the human population and also give people with certain disabilities some glimmer of hope. And on the other side of the coin there is some people that think we have no business playing God. They feel that playing God may possibly cause devastating effects to the human gene pool and may also led to misuse.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines gene therapy as the insertion of normal or genetically altered genes into cells usually to replace defective genes especially in the treatment of genetic disorders. By using gene therapy, we can go to t he base of the disorder instead of using drugs to alleviate symptoms. Some diseases that have been treated include ADA Deficiency, familial hypercholesterolemia, cystic fibrosis, cancers that include melanoma, Neuroblastoma, brain tumors and AIDS (Nation al Cancer Institute,1993).

Technical Aspects

There are three methods used to deliver the genetically altered material. The first method includes either retroviruses or retrotransposons. Retroviruses are viruses that can transfer their own genetic information and also genetically alter the huma n gene. These viruses are unable to copy themselves but still pose a problem in altering protein synthesis when these retroviruses splice a patient’s cells. This is were retroviruses come into play. There are parts of DNA from a cell that “ can copy th emselves onto other sites in the cells genome “ (Glausisus,1996). One type of transposon is a yeast transposon called Ty3. This yeast transposon is still under research.

The second method involves blasting genes with a pressurized gun filled with helium (Glausi...

... middle of paper ...

...normal or could led to misuse in other forms. For just these reasons we definitely need RAC (Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee), NIH (National Institutes of Health) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Without these committees the p ossibility of misuse will be greatly enhanced.

References

1) Glausisuz,J.(1996).The genes of 1995. 1995:The Year in Science 17,36-38.

2) Macer,D.R.J.Public Acceptance of Human Gene Therapy and Perceptions of Human Genetic Manipualtion.Obtained from the WWW 10/28/96:http//www.biol.tsykuba.ac.jp/~macer/Papers/HGT92:html

3) Britannica On Line: gene therapy. Obtained from the WWW 10/23/96:http://www.eb.com

4) National Cancer Institute.Questions and Answers About Gene Therapy. Obtained from the WWW 10/23/96: http://oncolink.upenn.edu/pdq/600718.html

5) Seligman,J.(1996).Hope for genetic healing. Newsweek,April 15,64.

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