Gene Therapy

The human condition can be severely affected by genetic therapy. There have been several accounts of deaths shortly after the treatment and you can also form new diseases. The diseases are as follows: Tumors, heart disease, arthritis, diabetes,etc. Risks also include the short term effects of the treatment. They don"t last long and you will have to go in to get the treatment more times than you would like to. That will cost you way too much money for short term effects. Not to mention how much medication and drugs you will have to take making you feel sick and drowsy. Our environment can be changed completely if gene therapy begins to work and becomes popular. Society will have less exception to those with a disorder or disease. Less people will have these genetic issues if the genetic therapy would actually work and have long term effects unlike they do now. Also, the cost of genetic therapy is too high! The richer people of society would have access to this treatment leaving the lower class with less likelihood of paying for it. (Which is a good thing in this case.) Ethical issues can occur as well, like changing your skin tone. Messing with genetics can mess with natural human abilities like how tall you are, the color of your eyes, athletic ability. And the generation that follows wouldn"t have the choice to get this therapy rather than another kind of traditional therapy. Once you think about it, changing your genetics is like playing with a human"s looks and those think it is like playing God. If you were given a disease you should treat it with surgeries and move on, but if you attempt to erase the disease from your body, it"s like playing creator. Once you get genetic therapy, don"t think the rest of your family will be okay. Because of genetic therapy, there are developmental problems with kids. Gene therapy on somatic cells can cause issues with reproductive system of the baby . Transferring genes into a fertilized egg cell can start the theory of "designer babies" which let parents decide what kind of traits they want their kid to have which is also like playing God. This is unnecessary! Remember Jesse Gelingser? Well, one kind of treatment is trying to make the immune system fight off the diseased cells, but that can be very problematic because the system can get over-worked and can cause bad reactions. Also, his liver was much too weak for the treatment he was given! If your disease is severe (which is usually the case if you"re getting gene therapy) then it is more dangerous if it wasn"t as severe. He had to take 32 pills a day, even though he was getting his genetics changed and mutated. Medication is already risky to take considering overdoses and how careful you must be in order to have them work successfully. If Jesse"s immune system was already trying to work with the genetics that have been changed, imagine the kind of struggle and reactions his body had to 32 kinds of medication and mutated cells. Your body cannot function and his immune system practically died. So did he 3 days after his treatment. Genetic therapy is way too dangerous at the moment to continue! We need to do more research in order to help people without large risks of death and other disorders or diseases.