Argumentative Essay On Gene Therapy

“Are we Playing God?”, do we have the right to manipulate people’s genes? These are some of the ethical questions raised by Christians. They believe that humans exist in God’s world and have no right to change it (“Moral”). People also argue that the human genome was given to you from birth and that it was generated by God. If we begin changing genes then it brings us back to ‘“playing God’”. Although these are popular questions that are asked about gene therapy, the most popular one and simple one is the safety of gene therapy. Although gene therapy has vastly improved there is still a possibility for error. The most fearful part is that the therapy works with your genes and chromosomes and people are afraid that instead of treating the genes, the doctors could
However the most controversy involving gene therapy sprouts not from this, but from germline gene therapy. Currently, gene therapy is used on people with genetic disorders and the cells involved are usably bone marrow or blood cells, these kind of genetic changes cannot be passed on to the patient’s offspring. People worry that doctors might soon use gene therapy on sex (germ) cells, ovum and sperm cells, which would allow the new, modified, genes to be passed on to one’s offspring. This concept is quite controversial, although it can prevent the genetic disorder from being passed down, it could cause unknown faults in the fetus or have long term side effects. The U.S. Government banned federal funds to be utilised for funding the investigation of germline gene therapy on humans (“What are”). Returning to the topic of religion, in 2008, the Catholic Church published a document named ‘“Dignitas Personae”’ in which the Church clearly stated its disagreement with the use of embryos and embryonic stem cells in experiments. The Church agreed with the use of somatic gene therapy, gene therapy performed on body cells, it disapproved germline gene therapy seeing that it could pose a threat to future