Legality And Morality Of Gene Therapy

The debate over the legality and morality of gene therapy has been going on for years now. With research constantly improving, should gene therapy be considered morally right? If so, who makes that decision, the parents or the doctor?

Gene therapy is the experiment of changing one’s genes in order to prevent or treat disease (Vaughn, 2013). With the process of gene therapy, the defective genes are replaced with normal genes. This means the individual’s chromosomes are altered in order to supply a missing gene or suppress a mutated one (Vaughn, 2013). We can see that this implication could be very useful for not only current generations, but also generations to come. If we can prevent a disease, maybe it is possible to avoid the malady altogether.

Somatic cell therapy involves resolving an existing problem, which would only affect the target individual and not later generations (Vaughn, 2013). Germline therapy is intended to repair the egg and sperm cells in order to prevent the disease for not only that individual, but also future generations to come (Vaughn, 2013). Implication of this type of therapy would eventually prevent the predisposition of each illness, lowering medical costs and giving one’s susceptible to the disease a better quality of life. These therapies sound flawless, but the problem lies in the morality and legality of the treatments. Somatic cell and germline therapies have harmful consequences, therefore the U.S. Food and Drug administration has yet to approve of these experiments (Vaughn, 2013).

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With gene therapy this issue is not so black and white. There is a grey area on its morality. Some ethical theories view this therapy as moral, while other, like consequentialist, have a different view. From a consequentialism standpoint, these theories would be viewed as immoral. Consequentialists are focused on producing the most positive outcome and outweighing the bad with the good. In the gene therapy case, the cons of therapy

In a study conducted in 2002, they polled students on their point of view with gene therapy (Sadler, 2002). For the most part they took a consequentialist standpoint, agreeing that the bad outweighed the good. They even took it a step farther, saying that with further research would approve gene therapy for strictly health reasons, but not for cosmetic or convenience reasons (Sadler and Ziegler, 2002). Most believe that gene therapy for convenience would cause societal segregation between “the haves” and the “have nots”.

Both of these experiments viewed gene therapy from a consequentialist viewpoint. I have to agree with the results of both experiments. I believe gene therapy definitely something to pursue, but from a consequentialist standpoint the risk outweighs the benefits. With further research, I believe this could be very beneficial to the humanity. If scientists could find a way to increase the safety and effectiveness of gene therapy, consequentialist would agree that then the benefits would outweigh the harm (Vaughn, 2013). We could essentially eliminate