The Pros And Cons Of Gene Therapy

Gene therapy represents a promising tool to cure or dramatically transform the life of a child that has been handed a genetic death sentence. Can we reshape humans into entities that are free of disease, and revolutionize genetic disorders into nonexistence? The answers are within our reach, when manipulating the genetic code of organisms, or engineering entirely new organisms, promises to alter the way we relate to the natural world. Thus, gene therapy is the transfer of genetic material into cells of tissues to prevent or cure a disease by either replacing a mutated gene with a healthy copy, or inactivating the mutated gene, and introducing new genes. By administration of DNA rather than a drug, many different diseases are currently being investigated as candidates for gene therapy. These include cystic fibrosis, cardiovascular disease, infectious diseases such as cancer and AIDS. This new foundation of unprecedented prospects should be preceded with caution, and should only be used in the developmental treatments of diseases to avoid abuse.

Gene therapy assists in explaining the nature of infectious diseases, in particular, the interactions between an invading microbes and their host’s immune defense system. A gene must be carried by a “vehicle”, or vector in order for the therapeutic gene to counterattack the disease. The use of vectors (genetically engineered retroviral) infect human genes, which overwrite defective genes and become functional again. The gene of interest is to efficiently infuse larger cells without activating an immune response against ourselves. “The immune system has developed means of detecting and killing the cells that harbors the invaders. All these stratagems are programmed into the genes of human ce...

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... and our futures. If gene therapy can counter such predispositions, it will become a very important part of the armory with which we combat disease. No longer, would someone that is born with a genetic disease or who develops cancer have the inability at the chance of a normal life. Gene therapy is the gift of life, ___. It has generated great expectations in society, in the last twenty years, already over 1,500 gene therapy protocols have reached the clinical stage for cancer and cardiovascular diseases. In the next twenty years, gene therapy will undoubtedly be an effective alternative to___ efforts and enable treatments of many diseases that over ____. Thus, gene therapy provides modern medicine within a new therapeutic tool that gives virtually unlimited possibilities to develop better, more efficient therapies that were once previously for incurable diseases.