The Importance Of DNA In Medical Field
Our bodies are a complicated system of bones, organs and blood. Each containing and complex code known as Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). It is a system of an ever-complex combination of 4 different nitrogen bases that expand to over 3.2 billion combinations that are unique to every living organism in the world. From this discovery of DNA, we have implemented it into multiple different fields since the 1950’s. One field being improved on since DNAs implication is in the criminal justice system. Another field benefiting since the implication of DNA is the medical field and made way to create more effective medication and better resistances to genetic and contagious diseases. DNA has many uses for the betterment of society even if we look at both the negative and positive side.
One of these professional field’s DNA has been used in is the criminal justice systems forensics branch. Since DNA was first implemented in 1986 it has become a main part of the criminal justice system. One major event was the Innocent protection act of 2004. This gave defendant in most serious crimes have access to counsel and post-conviction DNA testing. This acted to find the guilty member more accurately in cases with any source of DNA, but also a way to find people innocent who were wrongfully convicted. From this over 120 people between 2004 to 2008 on death row were found innocent of crimes for which they were convicted. Some states such as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Fort Collins, Colorado used DNA testing to solve a series of rapes and murders by the same person. DNA testing was able to break through to the green river killings cold case when a large police task force with $15 million in funding could not. However, there is a negative side to DNA testing in the criminal justice system. The negative is that there is a backlog of unanalyzed DNA and the amount of time required to analyze the DNA.
The other major field DNA testing is used in is the medical field. One of these major things DNA testing is used for in the medical field is to identify kinship between parents and children; this is discovered is by paternity testing. They do this by looking at the X chromosomes in the DNA. There are specifically 8 x chromosomes they look at. The chromosomes are “DXS10079-DXS10074-DXS10075, DXS6801- DXS6809-DXS6789, DXS7132, and DXS6799.” (Castañeda, Odriozola, Gomez, Zarrabeitia, 2012). The DNA is mainly extracted from people using buccal swabs and paraffin-embedded tissues. From this they compare the DNA with DNA from two or more undisputable close relatives to determine who the father is. The business known as Ancestry has ended up building a business off of peoples DNA. Ancestry has made better ways of looking into a person family history and even finding relatives people never even knew they had a connection to.
The medical field taken DNA into consideration when involving how medication will react to certain people. Scientists look at the proteins inside people’s DNA to accurately apply proper medication to patients. Such things looked at are liver enzymes which can make a drug more or less effective to certain people. An example of drugs response is how “the CYP2D6 only reacts with twenty five percent of medications. The CYP2D6 has multiple copies within one person’s body with some of them causing medications to be processed quickly.” (National Institute of General Medical Science, 2017). The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversee drug safety in the United States and provide the labels on over 200 medications. These labels include different dosages, side effects, and different effects towards people with certain genes. The NIH even funds scientists involved in pharmacogenomics to study how medication react with Asthma, Depression, and Cancer.
Another way the medical field has used DNA to a higher form is by determining the different blood types each person has. The process of figuring out blood types is done by look at the ABO gene inside the DNA for determining the blood types of A, B and O. This is determined by certain combinations of A’s, B’s, or O’s. Such as A blood types have a code with one A allele or combination of A and O. Same thing for B blood types and O blood types. The discovery of blood types has created a way for improving peoples survivability chances with blood transfusions. This could not have been possible if we did not look at human DNA.
One of the biggest things happening with DNA is research going into genome editing. The purpose of gene editing is to improve the understanding of gene’s and find better ways to treat genetic or acquired diseases.” (National Institute of Health, n.d.). The process involves using newer editing methods on the human genome. This is due to genome editing being able to mimic that of a cells repair system that allows this genetic editing to occur. Several different types of genome editing: TALENs editing, ZFNs editing, and CRISPER-Cas9. The CRISPER-Cas9 is gene editing that can be involved in human reproduction. The first use of genome editing was first used in clinics in 2014 trying to counteract HIV-1 by use of the cell splitting process known as ZFNs. “They counter acted this by disrupting the CCR5 gene within the DNA. Then another trial was in 2017 were the NIH used ZFNs to try and cure Huntington’s disease by adding more enzymes. The current thing the NIH is working on is to cure sickle cells and HIV.” (National Institute of Health, n.d.).
There are concerns with genome editing based on scientific and ethical reasons. One major reason is possible violations of the “Dickey-Wicker amendment that prohibits testing on creating human embryos for research purposes or for research in which human embryos are destroyed.” (National Institute of Health, n.d.). Another reason is there is a lack of information on how genome editing while affect the next generation, but also the lack of compelling information and no consent to study on the embryos. The NIH is a big supporter for genome editing and stated that “clinical trials with genome editing of embryos should be allowed only with robust and regulatory framework.” (National Institute of Health, n.d.). However, a Chinese scientist He Jiankui created the first genome-edited babies in November 2018. From this creation the Chinese government arrested He Jiankui due to violations of Dikey-Wiker amendment and the international science community. There is no detail at the time on the current state of these babies besides knowing that they were born and are healthy since the international science community blanketed the event so nothing else would be known. After this event on June fourth, 2019 the international science community took a vote on legalization of genome editing but was almost unanimously voted no on. After the vote the NIH made a statement on there being international moratorium research and continued international dialogue. It is to be noted that the NIH was one of the organizations to vote no on genome editing. However, the international science community did vote yes for continuing genome therapy.
Gene therapy is an experimental method to use genes to treat and prevent diseases. The purpose of the process is to use genes as treatment instead of using drugs or surgery to counteract diseases. This is done by scientists injecting cells into vectors (vectors are sometimes viruses) to deliver genes throughout the body. This process is meant to compensate for abnormal genes in the body. Gene therapy cells cannot be passed from parents to their children.
However, gene therapy has shown to have a higher risk then genome editing. Some major risk of gene therapy is higher risks of toxicity, inflammation, cancer, and sometimes unpredictable issues. The NIH does have an important role in the safety of gene therapy. The NIH provides all guidelines for all clinical trials involving genome therapy. Such rules involve “any clinical trials must be reviewed by the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee and must include protocols for each trial. For any clinical trials to be carried out the institutional review board and the institutional biosafety committee must both approve it.” (U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2019). This still confuses me greatly on how gene therapy is legal while gene editing is illegal.
If enough people start supporting DNA there is a larger spectrum of possibilities for finding ways to better society. However, people need to stop seeing many things of DNA as genome editing as a crime against God or consent from unborn things. The excuse of “crim against god’ has been used for many things like when movies came out or TVs, and even phones. Even the thing about consent from the embryos is not even used do to laws for women to be able to have abortions. Each of these reasons should not be a deterrence for creating a stronger system that has great possibilities for bettering people’s lifes.
We need to keep using DNA within the United States because of the increase in productivity and results in multiple fields. Such as DNA being fully implemented in the criminal justice system and has improved the accuracy of finding guilty party members and solving cold cases. Even the Medical field uses DNA to try and finder better results for the betterment of society. However, we are holding ourselves back from evolving the use of DNA in science. This is especially relevant to the lack of trust with genome editing. This being especially relevant with the only test of a born embryo from genome editing being blanketed. We need to keep using DNA and expand upon it for the betterment of society.
