e embryo therapy to cure it rather then abortion. While the basic process is similar with the one of patient therapy, to do an embryo therapy is a little bit easier than a patient therapy, because the immune rejection system of the embryo is not fully developed. The new DNA will not be ejected, while the former DNA will be altered. Gene therapy seems to be a promising and positive step for the medical community, but ethical questions arise every day as we discover more and more about the contents of the human genome. Does any person, whether well or ill, deserve respect as an individual? If the answer is affirmative, then carrying out experiments on patients, as Dr. Martin Cline of the University of California attempted to do in 1980, is fundamentally unethical. The clinicians must examine their own consciences and decide whether they behaved correctly and with full knowledge of the proposed treatment. Society has decided that part of it is that a termination of pregnancy before approximately 3 months is allowable if the child would suffer a serious handicap, but how to define a serious handicap. Is it ethical to terminate the pregnancy, if there is still a chance for the embryo to be normal? As the treatment of an early embryo will alter its inheritance, whether gene therapy poses long-term genetic problems to human inheritance? These are questions that will have to be answered by both the medical community and the patients, and there are no clear precedents at this time. Gene therapy has a promising potential to improve the lives of those who have diseases that have until now been death sentenced, but to take it into real practice human beings still have a long way to go....
