http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4282866/
Pretty neat stuff. The possibilities are endless.
Gene therapy
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Bill Glasheen
- Posts: 17299
- Joined: Thu Mar 11, 1999 6:01 am
- Location: Richmond, VA --- Louisville, KY
Yes, the possibilities are endless, but what a mess. Folks probably don't remember the years that East German and then Chinese female swimmers came from nowhere and started kicking bootie in the Olympics, all while having deep voices and stubble on their chins. Yep, they were using anabolic steroids, and it was before such technology could be detected.
Communist regimes and democracies alike use the Olympics as a kind of governmental propaganda. Even Hitler used the Berlin Olympics as a propaganda tool for The Third Reich. Communist East Germany and China already showed that governments will sponsor such "cheating." And a trip to "muscle beach" in California where folks can take a quick run south of the border to get any drug they want will show that individuals will cheat any way they can to get the buff body of their dreams.
My wife competed and did very well in body building in the 1980s. She left the sport when the competition started having deep voices. And trust me - I'm happy for that.
This is BIG for muscle diseases, and the medical treatment possibilities are indeed endless. There will be "gotchas" though. There's a good reason why our strength is limited the way it is. It isn't always wise to cheat mother nature.
There's no stopping it now though; the Genie is out of the bottle. I'm excited that we'll be curing many illnesses (such as even diabetes) that once could only be treated. But there will be unintended consequences to these revolutionary technologies, as there always are.
- Bill
Communist regimes and democracies alike use the Olympics as a kind of governmental propaganda. Even Hitler used the Berlin Olympics as a propaganda tool for The Third Reich. Communist East Germany and China already showed that governments will sponsor such "cheating." And a trip to "muscle beach" in California where folks can take a quick run south of the border to get any drug they want will show that individuals will cheat any way they can to get the buff body of their dreams.
My wife competed and did very well in body building in the 1980s. She left the sport when the competition started having deep voices. And trust me - I'm happy for that.
This is BIG for muscle diseases, and the medical treatment possibilities are indeed endless. There will be "gotchas" though. There's a good reason why our strength is limited the way it is. It isn't always wise to cheat mother nature.
There's no stopping it now though; the Genie is out of the bottle. I'm excited that we'll be curing many illnesses (such as even diabetes) that once could only be treated. But there will be unintended consequences to these revolutionary technologies, as there always are.
- Bill
Ew. If we had a better handle on cancer, I'd say this was a great development. Rapid cell division/multiplication is a recipe for cancer. Also, I can just imagine the toll on joints. If your muscles are already weak, as they stated due to age or muscular dystrophy, your joints would be okay. But to power up already powerful muscles?
What you got yerself there is too big'n engine for the frame, young padawan. That's why yer pod racer disassembled in flight.
Kami
What you got yerself there is too big'n engine for the frame, young padawan. That's why yer pod racer disassembled in flight.
Kami
One seed, many lives.
A bit off topic, but did anyone see where the "father of gene therapy" was arrested last month for sexually molesting an underaged female martial arts student of his over a 5 year period?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5562666
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5562666
Glenn
Cord of major interest
I did a research paper on the application of gene therapy to different illnesses. At the time, a reliable vector for the correcting gene to the target cell was the missing link. After talking with a woman last week currently working in a Harvard lab on gene therapy/cancer studies, it sounds like it still is. Also, I attended a presentation by a biomed research group, no doubt looking to impress an audience of potential investors. They crowned the evening with a slide of a live jellyfish embryo proving the success of gene therapy since his right eye glowed in the dark. The slide was visible long enough (for me) to notice his entire right side did not move during respiration; apparent paralysis. Of course my back row seat in the auditorium allowed them to get away with repeating back and answering a totally different question when I asked about it.
From what I’ve seen and heard the current risks and failures of gene therapy are significant, such that realization of this treatment is far off. The popular hollowed out viral vector is still not reliable enough to guarantee that the healing gene will reach the tissue in need and successfully stimulate the desired expression. And if not, what will happen? What if it over-expresses the desired trait? Until these questions are answered and their ramifications are controllable, gene therapy will hopefully remain in good sci-fi flicks and train reading for the public. Once it enters our every day realm, we will likely have greater concerns than supercharged athletes.
From what I’ve seen and heard the current risks and failures of gene therapy are significant, such that realization of this treatment is far off. The popular hollowed out viral vector is still not reliable enough to guarantee that the healing gene will reach the tissue in need and successfully stimulate the desired expression. And if not, what will happen? What if it over-expresses the desired trait? Until these questions are answered and their ramifications are controllable, gene therapy will hopefully remain in good sci-fi flicks and train reading for the public. Once it enters our every day realm, we will likely have greater concerns than supercharged athletes.
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Bill Glasheen
- Posts: 17299
- Joined: Thu Mar 11, 1999 6:01 am
- Location: Richmond, VA --- Louisville, KY
I was a bit pessimistic on my first post, mostly concerning an application of gene therapy related to muscle hypertrophy. I just know that athletes in general and bodybuilders in particular think nothing of using modern pharmaceuticals to create freaks of nature. Check out the site at Muscular Development magazine. I used to get it because they kept on top of the literature. But they were so brazen in their advocacy for steroid use that I couldn't in good conscience give them any more money.
Plus...they also were (and still are) pushing the nastiest-looking cheesecake I've ever seen on their "centerfold" pages (MD Girls). Women with unnatural-looking, double-D implants who regularly had eyeliner or tatooed lines on the border of their lips. Plus, they often had their silicone-injected lips wide open in their cheesecake shots. For the life of me, I can't figure out what's up with that; it friggin' grosses me out. Give me mother nature's wonderful creations any day.
That being said...
Gene therapy and stem cell methods are the wave of the future in medicine. Many common diseases and conditions such as type I diabetes and paralysis will only yield to these new treatments. Remember - insulin shots and wheelchairs are NOT cures. We can do better.
The history of human flight and space exploration were not pretty in the beginning. Now it's taken for granted that flying in a plane is the safest and best mode of long distance transportation.
Give it time.
- Bill
Plus...they also were (and still are) pushing the nastiest-looking cheesecake I've ever seen on their "centerfold" pages (MD Girls). Women with unnatural-looking, double-D implants who regularly had eyeliner or tatooed lines on the border of their lips. Plus, they often had their silicone-injected lips wide open in their cheesecake shots. For the life of me, I can't figure out what's up with that; it friggin' grosses me out. Give me mother nature's wonderful creations any day.
That being said...
Gene therapy and stem cell methods are the wave of the future in medicine. Many common diseases and conditions such as type I diabetes and paralysis will only yield to these new treatments. Remember - insulin shots and wheelchairs are NOT cures. We can do better.
The history of human flight and space exploration were not pretty in the beginning. Now it's taken for granted that flying in a plane is the safest and best mode of long distance transportation.
Give it time.
- Bill
If I could stay this interested in taxes...
Right on, Kami. The possibility for harvesting healthy cells in sick individuals is the glow pulling us all in and rightfully so. But...KZMiller wrote: Paralysis sounds like a side-effect that few would be willing to live with, and kinda counter-productive, don't you think?Kami
I'm concerned that this glow will blind us to the dangers of gene manipulation detectable only over the span of one or two generations. The Human Genome Project announced the 3billionth base pair decoding several years ago. In the meantime, they 'decoded' entire sections of DNA with label of 'Does Nothing.' In other words, they couldn't determine in the scope of their project specifically to what genes these base pairs stimulate expression. So they concluded it must be nothing
I hope - and here's a PETA target - we sacrifice more animals for testing before we irreversibly alter human genetics.-
Bill Glasheen
- Posts: 17299
- Joined: Thu Mar 11, 1999 6:01 am
- Location: Richmond, VA --- Louisville, KY
CJG
Believe it or not, this makes sense to me.
Many folks have this idea of the human body as this perfectly engineered thing made "de novo" from scratch with no hiccups, redundancy, or superfluous design. A careful study of comparative neuroanatomy will show the evolution of the human brain as complex built over top of the simple. It's a lot like starting with the Intel 8088 chip and MS DOS 1.0, and being bound by stupid decisions made early on because you wanted to make everything backwards compatible. It's amazing that Windows XP and the latest CPU chips work as well as they do, while being hamstrung by the past. Within all our brains are similar constructs of the most simple animal brains in the ecosystem.
DNA "evolves" via a combination of sexual reproduction, natural selection, and an occasional hiccup (mutation). Lots of stuff happens to it that has no effect whatsoever - positive or negative. Many changes are for the worse, and selected against because the result doesn't survive (a.k.a. "birth defects"). Only very rare changes are both substantive and beneficial.
But to you point, it's going to take a long time before we completely unravel the meaning of even single genes. Much will have us scratching our heads for generations. And as there are mistakes in the design of new drugs, so too will there be mistakes in genetic engineering. The possibilities of things going wrong are endless.
But we probably won't do any worse than Mother Nature in the long run. She can be cruel, you know.
- Bill
Believe it or not, this makes sense to me.
Many folks have this idea of the human body as this perfectly engineered thing made "de novo" from scratch with no hiccups, redundancy, or superfluous design. A careful study of comparative neuroanatomy will show the evolution of the human brain as complex built over top of the simple. It's a lot like starting with the Intel 8088 chip and MS DOS 1.0, and being bound by stupid decisions made early on because you wanted to make everything backwards compatible. It's amazing that Windows XP and the latest CPU chips work as well as they do, while being hamstrung by the past. Within all our brains are similar constructs of the most simple animal brains in the ecosystem.
DNA "evolves" via a combination of sexual reproduction, natural selection, and an occasional hiccup (mutation). Lots of stuff happens to it that has no effect whatsoever - positive or negative. Many changes are for the worse, and selected against because the result doesn't survive (a.k.a. "birth defects"). Only very rare changes are both substantive and beneficial.
But to you point, it's going to take a long time before we completely unravel the meaning of even single genes. Much will have us scratching our heads for generations. And as there are mistakes in the design of new drugs, so too will there be mistakes in genetic engineering. The possibilities of things going wrong are endless.
But we probably won't do any worse than Mother Nature in the long run. She can be cruel, you know.
- Bill
