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The Pros and Cons of Gene Therapy Gene therapy is a very controversial topic that has been

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The Pros and Cons of Gene Therapy
Gene therapy is a very controversial topic that has been discussed in the last five years and is being heavily studied to help cure cancer. Gene therapy is a technique aimed at treating genetic disorders by introducing the correct form of the defective gene into the patient’s genome (Dunlop et al., 2010). There are two main groups of gene therapy and they are germ line gene therapy and somatic gene therapy (Baksh, 2007). Germ line therapy consists of germ cells being modified by the introduction of functional genes, which are ordinarily integrated into their genomes (Garbutt et al., 2011). DNA encodes the therapeutic gene and replaces the mutated gene so the new gene can treat the disease. Germ line …show more content…

Gene therapy has saved many lives and given a second chance to many people. Gene therapy was used to treat a girl 6 years old named Emma who was suffering from leukemia. The doctors had tried many treatments to cure Emma from cancer and nothing was working even though, kids at her age have an 85% chance to survive. She was on the verge of death when gene therapy was used to alter Emma’s immune cells to genetically kill cancer cells. Emma has been cancer free for two years and is living the life of a normal child. Gene therapy has saved many lives but there also have been other cases where the treatment has not helped cure the patient’s genetic disorder and they have died. Take Jesse Gelsinger for an example. He suffered from an X linked genetic disorder of the liver so he was injected with an adenoviral vector carrying the corrected form of the gene (Couzin & Kaiser, 2005). This treatment was not a success and Jesse ended up dying four days later. He suffered from a massive immune response that was triggered by the use of the adenoviral vector that was injected in him to transport the correct gene into his cells, which caused him to have multiple organ failures and his brain to die. The advantages of gene therapy far out weight their disadvantages. People have lost their lives due to gene therapy are a few compared to the people that have got a second chance at life because of gene therapy. It gives

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