Gene Therapy Persuasive Essay

As a member of the ethnic committee, I strongly oppose gene therapy. This is because it changes human’s capability to fight against diseases. It enhances and increases human’s survival as gene therapy is used to replace disease-causing genes. As a result, humans are immune to diseases. This causes many problems to the balance of our ecosystem. One example is that this will cause human overpopulation as humans are able to overcome diseases that might cause death. As a saying goes, “One thing leads to another”, this will lead to pollution and extinction of animals and plants. Due to the testings of gene therapy, it has caused the death of an 18-year-old boy and two baboons. It also caused some side effects on two patients. What is even more preposterous is that before the testing of gene therapy of the 18 -year- old boy named Jesse Gelsinger, the scientists involved in this experiment did not report about the death …show more content…
Jesse Gelsinger had ornithine transcarbamylase (OTC) deficiency, which is a rare genetic disease in the liver that hinders the breaking down of ammonia in the body. When he was eighteen, he volunteered for gene therapy in hopes of curing his disease. However, little did he and the outside world knew that the scientists studying gene therapy hid some terrible news. Before the testing on Jesse, the researchers of University of Pennsylvania injected a virus also known as adenoviral vector into two baboons. The researchers believed that when adenoviral vector is injected to the body of the subject, it should not cause any defects to the organs but instead help replace the defective chromosome. Despite that, the two baboons died. The researchers failed to report this incident to the Food and Drug Association (FDA). Other than that, they also failed to report that two patients suffered from terrible side effects which would have stopped the continuation of gene