What I think, what do you?

When it comes down to the bottom line of Gene Therapy, I have my opinions on both sides of the matter. Dangerous or not, every medical breakthrough has had its doubts. Whether the unfortunate patients were well informed beforehand or not, it would be fair to say that their misfortune should not go to waste and therefore scientists should work harder to fix what went wrong. In a way the practice is a gamble of life, but if people are coming close to the end of theirs because of a disease which gene therapy may be able to cure, there is no reason we should not try to aid them and learn more in the process.

I have more loyalty to gene therapy’s practice only for life threatening diseases. When it comes to smaller diseases or disorders which inhibit the lives of people such as diabetes or haemophilia, I believe people should wait until it is a fully efficient and safe practice which contains very low risks. Yes, it would be great to be able to rid people of these, but the risk at the current time is too great.
People should not be against gene therapy completely though. They have no right to if they don’t have a life threatening or life inhibiting disease because we simply do not know how it feels to be like them.
If gene therapy were to become more acknowledged though, I would not be impressed if they take to using animals in testing because that is much more unfair than anything in this situation.

Moving onto germ and somatic gene therapy. I personally believe there is nothing wrong with changing family lines forever because it isn’t such a big issue if you are taking out the worst of it. If we were to rely on somatic gene therapy only then you would have to have the practice executed on each person born into the line with the disease rather than once where it can be ridden of forever.  What I am concerned about is changing individuality to better people’s natural ability. Everyone is different and has their qualities, I wouldn’t like to see a hundred Cathy Freeman’s because of gene therapy’s ability to enhance such factors because no one should be the same.

Everyone dreams of a long life with no sickness and no diseases and that an inevitable fact. I completely support this practice as long it is developed within reasonable terms, because I truly believe this could change the medical world and the lives of millions in the future.

Prof. R Chadha


Fun fact: Gene therapy is used to help advance plotlines in many of science fiction games, TV shows and books. It is a crucial plot element in metal gear solid where gene therapy has enhanced the capabilities of enemy soldiers.

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