Ethics in Science

            Biotechnological advancement has been primarily focused on the improvement of life. A relatively new field is that of genetic engineering, which when introduced in the 1970's caused much controversy. The potential to avoid life-altering illnesses before or during a person's life gives praise to the new field, but still raises ethical questions. The idea of gene therapy has undoubtedly become the savior for many, but with this knowledge can come problems with its "god-like" power. Genetic engineering could be used to create children that would have the best of everything and perhaps no flaw whatsoever. This idea of the "perfect" child has raised the question of how far do we go using genetic engineering, but first we need to know how exactly gene therapy works.
             First off genes are a segment of DNA that encode instructions on how to make proteins. Genes use chemical messages that instruct the cell to perform its functions by making either special proteins or enzymes. A genetically mutated gene contains a fault that disrupts the transfer of the gene message to its protein equivalent (5). A fault in a gene can occur spontaneously or can simply be passed on from mother/father to son/daughter (4). These genetic mutations cause a wide range of disorders such as cystic fibrosis to hemophilia (4). With modern technology these gene mutations can be fixed with sophisticated methods.
             Gene therapy involves changing the mutated genes in the human cell by introducing a healthy gene. The supply of healthy genes usually comes from stem cells of that person with the disease (4). The segments of DNA that are mutated can be cut from the DNA molecule by simply applying special enzymes designed to cut exactly at a point so that a researcher can isolate that gene and introduce and splice in the healthy one. These DNA molecules are then inserted into vectors in the form of a deactivated virus, which has limited genetic information of its own (4).