The Human Genome Project: The Future of Medicine :: Argumentative Persuasive Papers

The gentleman Genome Project The Future of MedicineIn the last half century, music has been rapidly progressing, determination cures for many diseases, ontogeny naked as a jaybird surgical techniques, developing vaccines, and gener in onlyy improving the overall health and life expectancy of the fairish person. Instead of living to their forties, it is commonplace for spate to live to seventy fiver and beyond. Medical research is constantly searching for ways to make people healthier and to keep them that way. New cancer and AIDS research comprises a huge portion of modern day medicine. However, the discoveries and breakthroughs that much(prenominal) projects bewilder produced have been few and outlying(prenominal) between. According to many, we are no closer to finding an actual cure for either ailment than we were ten grades ago. However, all is not lost. There is a way in which we can depress to regain some of the medical stride which we have lost. The way to do thi s is not by scouring the rainforests to try to make exotic drugs, nor is it new chemotherapy techniques or radiation treatments. This new way is based in our cells themselves, in understanding how we work, and knowing what our biological determinants are. To understand how our immune system fights disease, we essentialiness first understand what causes it. We must know our predisposition to certain kinds of ailments. We must know our genes. Knowing our genes is the fundamental concept behind the most excite scientific endeavor of the past decade, the Human Genome Project. This projects destination is to complete a comprehensive map of the human genome by the year 2003, one which illustrates the precise locations of every single gene in all twenty-three pairs of human chromosomes, along with the functions of these genes. The term gene is defined as being one of many discrete units of hereditary information hardened on the chromosomes and consisting of DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid). (Campbell, G-9) All these units put together comprise the genome. umpteen ailments that we suffer from are products of flawed genes. Cystic Fibrosis is the result of one such flaw. In 1989, biologists free the gene which causes this incurable ailment, and we have progressed very far in our search for a cure. Other ailments whose genetic causes have been isolated include breast cancer (Waldholz, B6), Alzheimers (OMIM Entry 104311), Tay Sachs (JUF News, 45), and Huntingtons (Brownlee, 580), as well as Diabetes (Maugh, 8), and many, many more.