Blog #13

Cancer Treatment

Gene Therapy to create a treatment for Cancer.

This can infect healthy cells instead of cancer cells.
Adults.

This is a treatment for cancer that can be dangerous because it can end up hurting a person more. Doctors have to introduce new genetic material into a human and hope that it infects the cancer cells instead of the healthy ones.

The problem with this is it is protocol and is being watched by FDA, NIH, and RAC. This isn't ethical to some people because it is focused on correcting flaws in a  life threatening way.




Stem Cell research
Stem cells useful for finding ways to cure cancer and other diseases.
The time to extract stem cells would be as an embryo. to do this the embryo must die. Ethical?
Conception.

The embryo has to be fertilized within a certain amount of time and stem cells must be extracted at a certain time as well. The embryos will die anyway so it would be useful to extract the stem cells from them and then let them die.

People argue that the embryo is still a person and it can't be taken advantage of like that. You are ultimately killing a potential person.





Designer Babies
This is when a parent can alter different things about their child before it is born.
Messing with the true life and creating it yourself.

A doctor can alter whether the baby has blue eyes or brown eyes, whether its a boy or a girl, he can even have a say in what diseases it will be less likely to get. This is all done through genetic engeneering.

Is this playing the role of god. Is this taking life into our own hands? Are we going to far to try to reach perfect? These are things argued against this idea of "building your baby."