Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Challenges, Risks, and Rewards: Learning to Control Our Biological Fate
- 2 Learning to Breed Successfully
- 3 How Life is Handed On
- 4 Cells in Sickness and Health
- 5 Experiences in Utero Affect Later Life
- 6 Infection, Nutrition, and Poisons: Avoiding an Unhealthy Life
- 7 Signs of Ageing: When Renovation Slows
- 8 Cancer and the Body Plan: A Darwinian Struggle
- 9 Fighting Infection
- 10 Are Devastating Epidemics Still Possible?
- 11 Discovering Medicines: Infinite Variety through Chemistry
- 12 Protein Medicines from Gene Technology
- 13 Refurbishing the Body
- 14 Living with the Genetic Legacy
- 15 Epilogue: Signposts to “Wonderland”
- References
- Index
14 - Living with the Genetic Legacy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Challenges, Risks, and Rewards: Learning to Control Our Biological Fate
- 2 Learning to Breed Successfully
- 3 How Life is Handed On
- 4 Cells in Sickness and Health
- 5 Experiences in Utero Affect Later Life
- 6 Infection, Nutrition, and Poisons: Avoiding an Unhealthy Life
- 7 Signs of Ageing: When Renovation Slows
- 8 Cancer and the Body Plan: A Darwinian Struggle
- 9 Fighting Infection
- 10 Are Devastating Epidemics Still Possible?
- 11 Discovering Medicines: Infinite Variety through Chemistry
- 12 Protein Medicines from Gene Technology
- 13 Refurbishing the Body
- 14 Living with the Genetic Legacy
- 15 Epilogue: Signposts to “Wonderland”
- References
- Index
Summary
The recently completed draft of the human genome sequence is literally a vision of the genetic legacy of our species, revealing the relentless evolution of DNA as millions of differences in base sequence between different individuals. These differences create the diversity of appearance and character of individual humans that is an important part of the texture of the human condition, and also the origin of genetic disease. With perhaps one in thirty births in the industrial world adversely affected to some degree by genetic disorders, what should be done about this burden? Must we accept the cruelty of fate, or is it a humane and proper thing to find solutions for those who suffer from these distressing conditions? For those who know that they carry a genetic disease, the problems of parenting are especially poignant. Most geneticists believe it is a mark of our humanity to fight the dismal consequences of genetic disease rather than to accept them passively. Surgery or organ transplantation, appropriate diet, and replacement therapy can correct, to an extent, some of these disorders. However, avoiding the birth of genetically damaged children is becoming an increasingly realistic, if controversial, option.
The Burden of Genetic Disease
There can be few parental heartaches greater than the implacable advance of a genetic disease slowly crushing a child's unique personality.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Biomedicine and the Human ConditionChallenges, Risks, and Rewards, pp. 290 - 311Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005