Early in the pregnancy you hear the worst, your baby has a fatal disease. The two of you are terribly heart broken over the situation. You tell your doctor that abortion is out of the question because you do not believe in it. Unfortunately you and your spouse look dumbfounded at each other because you have no idea what the doctor just said. Well, in the next couple of pages I am going to cover some of the basic ideas of human gene therapy, discuss some of the public debates, and wrap things up with my personal opinion.
Gene therapy is basically genotypic pharmacology.
This involves the use of factors which modify the genetic composition of a given cell or group of cells. As a result of the idea for human gene therapy, a new technique of treatment for many human diseases has been developed. The factors that contribute to the treatments are either gene products, or are capable of interacting with gene products, or have the ability to interact with gene products in an individual cell or a group of cells. The interactions of contributing factors to gene therapy success are extremely capable of regulating particular genes, which either directly or indirectly, leads to the cure of a disease. As a result of this interaction an eventual cure of the disease will be achieved through only a single treatment.