Week Nine: The Chemistry of Life

1. What are your thoughts on the ethics of “gene therapy”?

I think as a society and a culture and a human family, we should focus on prevention and healthy balanced living (this includes living in harmony with the environment, so that we do not create so many toxic situations that cause disease) instead of these highly technical fixes that treat the human body like a machine. However, I also think that if I had a child that was suffering and the suffering could be alleviated using something like gene therapy, I would probably jump at the chance to have my child treated. This paradox is troubling to me. The world view of this sort of medicine and the need for it all seems so basically wrong, and yet there does seem to be a need for it. We seem to have a lot of weird new diseases and it is awful to watch someone suffer. The hope of a quick fix is quite attractive. I hate that I feel so wishy washy about it all.

I looked gene therapy up on wikipedia and looked at the ethics section of the entry. It talks of the "Weismann barrier" which basically means that gene therapy can be thought of as ethical so long as adjustments to an individuals DNA are not something can be passed along to future generations. "The Weismann barrier is the principle that hereditary information moves only from genes to body cells, and never in reverse. " This principle is commonly accepted and gives gene therapy research the ethical go-ahead--if we really screw this person up, at least it won't spread into the population. However, some believe that if reproductive DNA (like gene therapy to the testicles) is applied, it may actually be passed on to future generations. The "Weismann barrier" can be breached. This may indeed be a problem. Wikipedia also lists other issues with gene therapy and reasons it may not work so well, including the fact that it has caused deaths.

So, ethically it may be wrong to use experimental technology on human beings when we don't fully know the consequences. I am going to gamble and say that gene therapies are being developed through use and abuse of innocent non-human animals, which I always think is wrong. Wrong wrong.

2. Check out and review the one of these Definitions of the “Chemistry of Life”

I looked at the link that took me to Stanford's biochem department. A few things I noticed: Ethics does not play a big role in their course offerings. It is present, but not overwhelmingly so (I didn't see a single course devoted solely to this topic); out of about fifteen faculty members, just two are women--what's it like to be a woman biochemist and how does their approach differ from that of men? Biochemistry, like all advanced sciences, has its own language that injects brain scrambling roadblocks into the brain of the laywoman. So many unfamiliar vocabulary terms made it difficult to understand even the course offering descriptions. They study how molecules act at the cellular level. Backgrounds in organic chemistry and biology are required. Once you graduate from their program you can teach or do research. Highlighted on the website is the usefulness of biochemistry to understanding disease, particularly cancers.

3. Check out and review one of these Animations of General, Organic and Biochemistry

I wish that the animations had some explanatory text. That said, my limited knowledge found the animations mildly interesting.

Fat entry into a cell looks like a tennis ball being hit into a pond. So easily accepted! Olestra has many more "arms" than regular fat and looks mighty scary! I didn't like seeing the collapse and rupture of red blood cells. I hope this is not happening inside my body! Vitamin B12 looks very complicated -- like a bunch of jacks glued together in an artistically wild way. Vitamin C looks much simpler. Folic acid is fat and wormy.

I looked at codeine and morphine, viagra and heroine. I can't say I learned a lot from looking except to say that no chemical is inherently "bad" -- it's just a bunch of elements linked together. And it's odd that these different compounds can have such varying effects on the human body.