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The Ethics Of Human Gene Therapy

The periodical of Leroy Walters not only talks about the ethical issues of Human Gene Therapy but also the "political" and economical issues as well. It explains how the therapy can help only a certain categories genetic disorders, those that have "the simplest kinds of genetic defects". So far, only lab animals are being used to check if these treatments actually work, and even with these animals, the modification is still inefficient. No human genetic alterations have even been contemplated on, moreover any actual introduction of such treatment on humans, been made.
It goes on to talk about the therapy's relationship of possible benefits and harms, dubbed as "risk assessment". How many people actually have the disease, are at risk to have the disease, how many generations it can affect, and lastly, how many people actually die from it. The process assesses the present medical therapies, diets, alternative treatments that render the patient control over his/her condition. It involves laboratory experiments in animals and tissue samples to further determine and evaluate the safety and of course the effectiveness of the new technique. Using lab animals however, poses an exclusive problem; there are limited animals that have single gene defects that cause problems in humans and there are none that have the human disease of enzyme deficiency. So in short the resources for experimentation are very limited, time consuming and have to be induced to the animal by inserting a new gene into the animal cell and monitor the gene and even by doing this, it still will not be able to demonstrate a clinical "cure" in a diseased laboratory animal.
A benefit of gene therapy thou is that the affected cells are treated outside the animal's and introduced in vitro. So if anything goes wrong with the cells, they are not returned back into the animal's body. The downside of this procedure is that it is the new gene will be introduced back into the body via the stem cells...