The Ethics of Gene Therapy Essay -- Genetics Science Papers

The Ethics of Gene Therapy Francis Crick was quoted as saying, "We used to think that our fate was in our stars. Now we know that, in large measure, our fate is in our genes." Over 40 years ago, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). From this a new technique has evolved called gene therapy. Gene therapy was discovered in the 1980’s a few years after researchers were already able to isolate specific genes from DNA. These techniques matured from the massive surge of ideas generated during the Recombinant DNA (rDNA) era. Gene therapy is basically the repairing of genes to correct for diseases that result from a loss or change in our genetic material. It is hard to comprehend the total effects of gene therapy, because we do not know if it should really be used? Who does it really benefit? And ultimately people can easily contemplate how it affects him or herself and their family. Therefore, to understand gene therapy some technical aspects need to be discuss ed. Technical aspects DNA is present in the nucleus of cells and is the genetic information of all organisms. The information of a human genome could be thought of in terms as an "encyclopedia", the 23 chromosome pairs would be "chapters", each gene a "sentence", three letter words "codons", which are spelled by each letter a "molecular nucleotide"--adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T) (Elmer-Dewitt, 1994). A gene acts as a blueprint and if these were blueprints for a house and the measurements were off by a foot, it has a huge influence on its total structure. This is the same for our bodies, if a slight alteration in our genetic information occurs like a mutation this could lead to a disease. D... ...tad. 1991. Principles of genetics. 8th ed. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Gorman, C. 9 Oct 1995. Has gene therapy stalled? Time p. 62-63. Henderson, C.W. 5 May 1997. Researchers use gene therapy to protect human cell from HIV. AIDS Weekly Plus p. 16-17. Henderson, C.W. 5 May 1997. Hopkins researchers complete human gene therapy trial of kidney cancer vaccine. Cancer Weekly p. 29-30. Keenan, J.F. 20 Oct 1990. Human gene therapy: and ethical advance? America p. 262-263. Macer, D.R.J. Shaping genes: ethics, law and science of using new genetic technology in medicine and agriculture. Obtained from the WWW:http://www.biol.tsukuba.ac.jp/~macer/SG14.html Meiser, C. Medical ethics symposium on gene therapy. Obtained from the WWW:http://shsaa.org/Spectator/94n5/5gene.html Mulligan, R.C. 1993. The basic science of gene therapy. Science 260:926-932.