Gene Therapy: Describe the Technology. What it Accomplishes?

Gene Therapy
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For quite some time now, the biomedical field has toyed around with the idea of creating super organisms. Such organisms were meant to have certain features which would enable them to withstand particular challenges in their environments, or have features that would help them in combating physiological problems. To do this, mastery of gene technology was paramount, since it would help them to not only alter, but manipulate the genes in a way that suited their aim. Among the most widely used instances of gene technology, is gene therapy. Gene therapy has had its own impacts, both good and bad, and in return has also brought different views both socially and ethically.
Gene therapy is the alteration or adjustment of the innate structure of the genes, so as to repair them and help in preventing certain deformities of deficiencies brought about by a change in the genetic composition (Lewis, 2012). Gene therapy on the larger picture basically entails all the processes that help in enhancing the endurance and resistance of the body to diseases. It is not a new idea, since it has been there for quite some time. Interest in gene therapy originated from the knowledge of the structure of the DNA, especially the fact that it was made up of nucleotides, each having a distinct pairing order on the strands. The base pairing and the order played a big role in the protein that was created. Any error in pairing is what basically brought about a certain deformity or genetic disease.
Scientists were therefore thrilled with the notion of being able to correctly pair these bases, so as to prevent the incorrect pairing that would result in the various genetic deformities. Perhaps the most encouraging of the early efforts in gene research was the use of bacteria to produce insulin. Scientists therefore believed that since bacteria could produce insulin, then the body too, can be made to. Advances in gene therapy have made it a rather easy and uncomplicated procedure. Now, inorder to deal with any genetic problems, what is done is to first of all identify the defective gene. Then coming up with the required gene and duplicating it (Herzog et.al. 2010). In order to do this, it should be isolated and marked accordingly. The final procedure is injecting it into the structure of the defective structure. As for the defective gene, it is expelled from the structure through the use of a certain restriction enzyme, whose role is to break the structure at clearly specific points.
Gene therapy in humans has taken two dimensions, the somatic and the germline gene therapy. Somatic gene therapy is the insertion of therauptic genes into a patient’s non-sex cells. Since they are inserted into such cells, the modifications made are only within the realm of the patient and not his or her subsequent generations or offsprings. According to Strachman and Read (2004), somatic gene therapy makes up a big chunk of what is done by medical scientists, since it is what helps in the treatment of patients individually. There is more research in somatic gene therapy, particularly somatic cell transfer, flanked by the increase in the cases of genetic diseases such as hemophilia and cystic fibrosis....