Bernales, Erika Anne D.

Activity 4 – Gene Therapy

BS Psychology 2A January 14, 2021

Write a 500-word position paper, discussing if you agree or disagree with Gene Therapy. Please avoid
copy-pasting ideas from the internet.

Gene Therapy is ana experimental technique that uses genes to treat or prevent disease. Gene
Therapy is designed to introduce genetic material into cells to compensate for abnormal genes or to make
a beneficial protein. If a mutated gene causes a necessary protein to be faulty or missing, gene therapy may
be able to introduce a normal copy of the gene to restore the function of the protein. Viruses that make us
sick have our own genome that scientists learn that we can remove most of the virus’s genome yet we can
still use the virus’s natural ability to get into ourselves which is required for gene therapy agent. The viruses
are also modified so they can’t cause disease when used in some certain people. But I would like to disagree
to the usage of this gene therapy. Since, gene therapy is still developing some ways of treating certain
diseases and also that gene therapy is not suitable treatment for all the diseases. Hence, this is still a new
therapy that we don’t understand all of the risk yet and we also not want to risk the lives of certain people
who would want to undergo this kind of treatment. It is still risky because genes are the ones who will get
hit in this procedure and the patient who would undergo might get affected in some certain ways. There
are also some long-term effects and complications that even the scientists or developers haven’t known and
understand yet. Recognizing this, scientists have been working for decades on ways to modify genes or
replace faulty genes with healthy ones to treat, cure or prevent a disease or medical condition. To add more,
gene therapy doesn’t have a high success rate to proceed in this kind of treatment and it is still a long way
to go to finally use this kind of treatment. Gene therapy is also currently being tested only for diseases that
have no other cures. Furthermore, if gene therapy will become available only those people who have the
ability to afford this kind of treatment will be the ones who can receive this treatment. Because we all know
how much it will cost if we undergo this treatment. In anyways, it would be nice if this Gene therapy
treatment would be fully discovered, enhance, and successful then it will become a big help for us in the
near future. There will be a chance to those diseases whom have not yet a cure, medicine, or vaccine be
treated by this gene therapy. It would also be very convenient to those will undergo this gene therapy
treatment because their health would become very stable again. And if this success rate goes up then it
would become much easier all around the world to take care each and everyone’s health. But we also need
to take note that before gene therapy products be release to the society it still needs to undergo to FDA
testing in which to ensure the effectiveness and readiness of this product to the consumers health and to
identify more if there would be any complications to those people who have some certain diseases so that
they can prevent the mistreatment and misused of this treatment because after all it is the lives of people
who we are talking about in this matter.