GENE THERAPY

By: Ashley Payne and Katelyn Cassady

What is it?• Gene Therapy is a fast growing field of medicine where genes

are inserted into the body to treat diseases. Genes are made to control heredity and give the basic biological code for determining a cell’s specific functions.

How is it used?

• Gene Therapy can be used to treat cancer. It can prevent diseases such as cystic fibrosis where there’s a lack of gene needed to produce a salt-regulating protein. Huntington's disease, Familial hypercholesterolemia.

Pros and Cons • Gene Therapy can wipe out genetic disease before it can even begin and get rid of

suffering for the future generations. Gene Therapy can be known as a “medicine” for the future since it can control and/or eliminate hereditary diseases.

• There are said to be many consequences of Gene Therapy. The first consequence would be putting human fate into there own hands. Giving someone the ability to manufacture future generations. Another is religion, some people do not believe in manipulating DNA. The cost of Gene Therapy is also very high at this time and that may be a big problem for some families.

The results of Gene Therapy• Gene Therapy is a new technique that is being used to treat many

different diseases and cancer. At the moment it is still being experimented and it will take many years to find out if it can have an important role in treating cancer. These experiments have shown that introducing new genes into both tumor cells and normal cells in patients is possible. There have been very few side effects with the gene-based treatments used so far, which is encouraging for the future

Different Illustrations of Gene Therapy