Comments on: Gene therapy saves patient from lifetime of blood transfusions

By: Kidney Cancer Survival Rate

Kidney Cancer Survival Rate — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 19:22:53 +0000

Hey. Thanks Guys. I’m working on a biology paper for my schooling at the moment and well obviously because I’m on this page its about gene therapy and pros and cons to it and things this little convo has helped heaps.

By: Callum

Callum — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 22:40:35 +0000

By: Frank Tuma

Frank Tuma — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 15:18:48 +0000

For twenty or so years in the field of biology there have been ethics discussions between people of the cloth of the major religions and biologists. The consensus was and is that what makes it acceptable or not is the purpose of the modifications. In short if the mods are for helping the life of an individual it’s good. In the biology field they even have a specific field of ethics just for those kinds of continuing debates.

By: Donna Rogers

Donna Rogers — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 05:02:49 +0000

Regarding overpopulation, Mother Nature will fix that, either from pandemic, volcanic apocalypse, or starvation due to ruining the land. Oh, and an asteroid strike might take us out also. In the 60′s, the news was we were heading for nuclear holocost. Nature will get revenge somehow.

By: Dr Aust

Dr Aust — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 21:20:44 +0000

In some ways the really exciting prospect from of this, IF it turns out to be widely applicable, is not just the potential "liberation" from all the transfusions but the avoidance (if one doesn't need the transfusions) of "transfusional iron overload". Severely thalassaemic patients who need repeat transfusions get iron overload over a period of years, as every transfusion contains iron as part of the haemoglobin in the transfused red cells. This iron overload used to kill transfusion-dependent thalassaemia major patients quite young until iron chelation therapy was developed Even with chelation therapy iron overload often kills the patients in adulthood or middle age due to heart or liver damage (heart failure due to cardiac damage from the iron build-up is the leading cause of death). The iron chelation therapy has been a major advance, but it isn't a total solution and often requires overnight subcutaneous pump infusion of chelators. More info on (e.g.) the patient.co.uk site here Anyway, a gene therapy / transplant cure for thalassaemia would potentially solve all this... although of course there have been a LOT of false dawns (and a lot of hype) in gene therapy. So still early days. It also serves as a good illustration of all the years of painstaking "background" work that goes into producing these kind of headline advances.

By: Casey

Casey — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:02:09 +0000

MattK – I totally agree with you. It’s a no-brainer to push the guy out of the way of the bus (or treat the sick person to make them better) I just think it’s inevitable that the debate I mentioned will come up and I was hoping someone had some insight to similar discussions.

By: Justin Topp

Justin Topp — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 02:57:20 +0000

Ed,
Do you know how this compares with other studies on patients with severe immunodeficiencies? Been done already, right?

By: MattK

MattK — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 00:57:55 +0000

Cool story. Casey, I trust that if you saw a young man about to be hit by a bus you would immediately warn him to get out of the way rather than pause to consider the ethical dilemma of saving someone’s life in an era of overpopulation.

By: Casey

Casey — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 19:04:23 +0000

Wow. Welcome to the revolution! My only question is this (and I’m hoping someone better read than me has an answer): what are the ethical considerations at play? What I mean is this is clearly a great advancement in medicine. As gene therapy becomes a more commonplace treatment for disease, more people are going to be living longer. I’m no mathematician, but more people + same amount of resources = long term problem. Does anyone know if there was serious debate about this question when antibiotics became commonplace treatment to fight infection? Is it even the same/similar argument?

By: Grumpy Bob

Grumpy Bob — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 18:48:57 +0000

But identical twins *are* genetically identical (at least if one is beta-haemoglobin homozygous null, the other will be too)…there may be epigenetic differences, but if one is homozygous mutant, the other will be too.