Long Term Benefits Of Gene Therapy

Though the ability to change the genetics of a human to cure diseases has a great amount of value to the scientific community it has met some opposition in terms of ethics. Some scientists speculate that the gene therapy itself could cause damage to the genome of the patient. This of course has not been proven at the current time as gene therapy has not been used for a long enough time to see the long term effects. Another thing that some people believe is that gene therapy is not a reliable source of treatment right now as it has not been used for a long time. They therefore believe that the long term effects are unknown. Though this is true it is also not proven that the treatment will not work in the long term. Critics of gene therapy fear that if gene therapy is opened to the …show more content…
Even with all of these concerns there are many benefits that gene therapy can offer. The first benefit is that people will be able to return to their lives disease free. This could extend people’s lifespans by several years (depending on the disease) and, in many cases, remove debilitating side effects from medication that they would take to offset their disease. In an experiment involving macaque monkeys was performed in which the monkeys were given a neurotoxin that created the same symptoms as those exhibited as Parkinson’s Disease. Some of the monkeys then received gene therapy giving them three genes that are responsible for producing dopamine. Dopamine is the substance that Parkinson’s patients receive to control their shaking and motor deficiencies. The monkeys that received the treatment saw full recovery of dopamine and returned motor skills. Another benefit of gene therapy is that it produces no serious side effects. This is due to the fact that the patient’s body is regaining the ability to function properly and is not in fact being treated with