Porter Harris

Capstone: Biology of Disease

November 16, 2018

Curated Paper 2

Growing up I have always gravitated towards any type of competition. I have an older brother that I watched play multiple sports, which grew my passion for engaging in many sporting events. Many times I would play with my older brother and his friends, which allowed me to practice against tougher competition. While I loved playing sports, I had my fair share of repercussions that followed. Broken bones, torn ligaments, scrapes, cuts, bumps and bruises were all apart of stepping on the court or field. Many of these injuries were relatively quick healing after taking proper care of them. I had to develop a great understanding of taking care of my body in order to further progress towards competing at higher levels as I got older. Unfortunately, there are some injuries that are unavoidable. One of the major issues that I kept running into during my time playing football was concussions. I had my very first concussion when I was in 8^thgrade. Moving onto high school football I suffered from a couple more concussions, which lead to only more as I decided to continue playing at the collegiate level. After long lasting symptoms such as reoccurring short-term memory loss and headaches, I decided to stop playing. 

            Athletic organizations such as the NCAA have continued to monitor head trauma issues in all contact sports. New rules and regulations have been put in place in order to keep athletes like me safe from developing brain diseases. The importance of limiting concussions within the athletic community is at an all time high. It is comforting to know that new regulations have been set in place within many different contact sports in order to limit concussions. As one who has personally dealt with these issues in the past, the importance of emphasizing player safety through all contact sports is essential. With many changes made within player safety regulations and continuous research done, many have been made aware about the fast increase of concussions within the athletic community.

            Another intriguing topic that has brought a lot of ethical issues to the athletic community is gene therapy. With the development of the genetic editing tool called CRISPR-Cas9, scientists are able to make precise edits within the human genome in order to alter many types of phenotypic traits. An ethical issue that has been brought to the attention of the public has been whether we use gene therapy to alter physical stature and athleticism. Many parents might be temped to genetically alter an embryo in order to put their child at an advantage when it comes to athletic competition. There have been parents who have provided fake birth certificates for their child so they could qualify to play on little league baseball teams, so would genetically modifying a child be out of the question? Probably not. Another common ethical issue that stands with the public is whether or not gene therapy could be playing with God. 

            The topic of gene therapy playing God is an interesting one. Being able to mess with the human genome in order to manipulate physical traits such as eye color and height is pretty powerful. I think that there is a fine line between being able to cure diseases (which are foreign within the body) and changing physical traits (such as eye color, height, hair color, etc.). Playing with God would be more towards changing these traits, which could be foreign when mother and father do not carry these genes. This brings me back to where we could possibly create some type of laws or regulations when it comes to inserting foreign genes within human beings. 

            Gene therapy along with brain and microbial issues within the body can all be connected when it comes to the topic of Ayurveda. In order to completely balance these issues that stem from both medical and ethical concerns, we need to first understand the issues that each bring. Scientists have done a remarkable job thus far with research that has been provided for the understanding of the general public. Further research is essential to bringing the public together in order to resolve many of the ethical and moral issues that come with gene therapy.