How An Individual's Genetic Influence Affects The Body

Personalized medicine is currently on the running towards becoming one of the leading advancing fields of health care determined by a person’s individual genetic make-up. It enables an understanding of the molecular framework of the human system so as to augment preventive therapeutic strategies. The move from reactive to preventive health care comes about with the implementation of personalized medicine as an alternative to traditional health care practices.

The high prices set by pharmaceutical companies for drugs allows the companies to continue researching, developing, and producing new drugs. As new diseases are discovered, new medications must be discovered in order to treat them.

HC1: Personalized medicine is a relatively new practice that involves using a person’s genetics to make medical decisions about which direction to take in terms of disease prevention, treatment, and diagnosis (“Personalized medicine,” 2015). The practice of personalized medicine allows doctors to predict which diseases a certain individual may be susceptible to so that proper treatment less likely to harm the patient can be ensued. This could potentially be an incredible breakthrough in the field of science and medicine (“What is personalized”, n.d.).

The need for new and more effective treatment continues to increase and personalized medicine appears to be the answer to our prayers. With further research personalized medicine could revolutionize pharmaceuticals and to go out on a limb even find a cure for aids and other cancers. But it is too early to have high expectations for a science that has not been deeply explored. It seems that the fantasy of finding a perfect match treatment for each individual has raised support from many institutions including the White House and the FDA. There have been some recent personalized medicine treatments approved by the FDA and this has lead President Obama to bring forward the Precision Medicine Initiative (U.S. Food and Drug Administration), which would give millions in monetary support for research to be conducted on personalized medicine. The issue here is whether

According to Chrystoja and Diamandis (2013), targeted genome testing is less costly than some traditional testing methods, is effective in assisting decision making for certain neoplastic medications and is useful in guiding the proper testing for certain diseases such as Lynch Syndrome. In addition, genetic makeup determines the pharmacokinetics of certain drugs and genome testing may assist in medication therapies. Studies indicate that genetic predisposition determines the effectiveness of 20% to 95% of prescribed medications (Bartlett, 2011). With DNA information, a physician can prescribe a tailored medication treatment that will benefit the

Medical advances, such as new technology, drive up the prices of treatment. Increasing the quality of care usually causes healthcare costs to go up. This limits access to those who cannot afford it.

The Dr.’s view on gene patents is the halt they put on testing and studying of genes and current studies to find a major breakthrough for the disease. (441) It is not only fair to the researchers who spend their lives trying to develop a cure but also to the loved ones and

Pharmacogenomics, a component of precision medicine, is the study of how genes affect a person’s response to particular drugs. It involves a combination of pharmacology and genomics, to manufacture medication and doses that are customized to fulfill the variations found in people’s genes. (Reference 2016)

Imagine the possibility of eliminating serious genetic diseases from the world. Imagine the idea of treating, preventing or even curing diseases that are yet to be cured. Imagine the feeling of being given improved health and a prolonged lifespan. This can all be accomplished with the aide of genetic engineering. Human genetic engineering refers to the process of directly manipulating human DNA to produce wanted results. DNA is a simple but very complex chemical that has the power to change the world and has begun to do so already. Many opponents to gene therapy fail to realize that genetic engineering has great potential to become very important in the biomedical industry. Though controversy exists regarding the ethics of human genetic engineering, it can produce numerous benefits, which outweigh its disadvantages and side effects; therefore, scientists should be able to manipulate the human genome for the purpose of helping people with serious medical conditions.

Gene therapy is defined as the medical replacement of defective genes in living human cells; its aim is to replace the activity of a defective gene by activating a dormant gene which has a similar function (Wheale & McNally, 212). Under gene therapy comes the politically controversial Human Genome Project, a fifteen-year, $3 billion federally-funded biology program. The goal of the project is to isolate the defective gene on the chromosomes which comprise the human genome (Fletcher, 2). In this manner, the Human Genome Project may be able to rid the cancer-ridden genes from human DNA, thereby curing cancer permanently. The project has been the focus of much scientific and political controversy over the past few years for its possible ramifications are extensive to all of human existence.

Conjugate vaccinations were discovered in the 1980s as a solution to overcome the difficulties with polysaccharide vaccinations. Through using conjugation, the immune response could be changed from T-cell independent to T-cell dependent, meaning that the T-cells play a much bigger role in the immune response. This lead to an increased immunogenicity in infants and antibody booster response to multiple doses of the vaccine, two areas with which polysaccharide vaccinations fell short. Current conjugate vaccinations are available for pneumococcal and meningococcal diseases. Vaccine antigens may also be produced through genetic engineering and are termed recombinant vaccines. There are currently four types of recombinant vaccines. These include Hepatitis B, where the viral gene is inserted into a yeast cell, Human papillomavirus, where the genes for a viral coat protein are inserted into yeast cells, Typhoid, where the salmonella typhi bacteria are genetically modified to not cause illness, and influenza, where the virus has been engineered to replicate effectively in the mucosa of the nasopharynx rather than the

relatively rare single-gene or chromosomal disorders. But as result of advances in molecular medicine, genetics is now able to provide information about more common and accordingly more costly diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, and coronary artery disease. It is the predictive ability of genetic tests for these diseases that makes them especially intriguing in adopting a preventive medicine approach and reducing overall healthcare expenditures.

Vaccines are made of viruses or bacteria that originally cause the diseases. In order to make this viruses and bacteria usable as a vaccine, scientists choice one of the three basic methods depending on the vaccine they want to produce. The first method is using weak version of the virus causing the disease. They weaken the virus by limiting its production using chemical material. This method helps produce small amount of the virus to stimulate the immune system without harming the body. Scientists use it to make vaccines for diseases like measles, chickenpox, and mumps. (“ Weaken the Virus”1,2,3). The benefit of this method is providing a life lasting immunity for the person with one or two doses of the vaccine.( “Weaken the Virus” 9,10). However, this type of vaccine can not be used for people with low immune system .(“ Weaken the Virus” 10,11).

revolutionizing medicine and treating disease. It is believed that Gene Therapy holds the key to

Exploration into the function of each gene discovered will continue well into the 21st century. The knowledge gained from this will lead us to better understand the cause of genetically related diseases. Having the ability to recognize the causation of a disease will shift technology from trial and error treatments to specific drugs designed to treat the gene sequence and protein structure. This is called gene therapy and is the most exciting aspect of the HGP. It gives the