Week Nine

The Ethics of Gene Therapy

Should my children contract fever, headache, joint pain & itching followed by debilitating infection of the brain & central nervous system I would go to any length to attempt to cure them.  I feel the same about any human being suffering from severe skin disfiguration as well as long-term disease, fever & weight loss.  I am concerned about the well-being of anyone that I share this planet with and I have a great deal of compassion for those that suffer.  I intend to graduate from AIMC, get my license and go out to do the best I can to be of service to others.  

What am I missing here?  I am uncertain as to the question of ethics.  Is it because there are drugs languishing in the chemical libraries of pharmaceutical companies waiting for core genomes to be discovered?  Is it because drugs are considered to be "bad"?  Is it because were there to be a cure someone would profit from it?  Personally if someone close to me was sick I would be more than happy to pay whatever I had to see them well.  I have no problem exchanging money for goods and services.  I am happy that scientists have been able to identify the core genome of the three parasites.  I am glad that someone paid them to do it.  I don't work for free and neither do you.  You won't treat for free and neither will I.

I looked at Wikipedia for more information on African Sleeping Sickness.  It appears to me that the new class of drugs has been tested on mice, but not humans.  I think that bringing a new drug to market takes quite a bit of testing, time & money. 

The Chemistry of Life 

I had really never given much thought to what biochemistry is until we read the article in class last Wednesday.  I like the idea that biochemistry is the chemistry of life, but I think a more descriptive definition is "Biochemistry is the branch of science that explores the structure and function of all living organisms at the molecular level."  It offers a little more explanation of how the chemistry part relates to the biology part.

Animations

I was not that thrilled with the animations.  Maybe I would have like them better if they had text.  Mine did not have any sound, so I guess I was supposed to already know what they were depicting.  I did like the animation of graphite and diamond because I read about them when we were discussing the molecular structure of carbon.