First, to understand what I'm talking about, read this article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2368276/Scientists-switch-extra-chromosome-causes-Downs-Syndrome.html
Here is one quote from the article (but, you should really click on the link and read the whole thing):
"Gene therapy has already been used to treat medical problems that result from the presence of one defective gene, but this is the first time that silencing the impact of a whole chromosome has become a possibility."
The news in this article has been shared and re-shared by a good number of parents of children with PWS, on Facebook. It is definitely exciting news; while the possibilities of gene therapy have been researched for some time, this particular development is one that really resonates in the PWS community. There is a variety of PWS with which this possibility of turning off - or even turning on - a chromosome or parts of it is especially important: those children who have PWS by uniparental disomy, meaning they have two X (maternal) chromosomes in the 15th pair.
I can't possibly get deeply into the genetics of this - I'm relatively smart but I'm not a geneticist. What struck me as I read this article wasn't the miraculous science of it all. Rather, it was the moral and ethical ramifications of this development that would be faced, I think, down the road.
Does this ability to turn off that extra chromosome - would that mean that when in-utero testing is done, and the tests come back as definitely positive for Down's syndrome, that then the parent(s) would be able to make a choice about their baby? And by choice I mean, would they then be able to choose to still have the baby, but it would be a baby whose genes had been genetically modified so that they no longer had Down's Syndrome?
If this plan of action became available - what would society feel about parents who chose NOT to have their unborn child's genes genetically modified, and they thus chose to go ahead and give birth to a baby with Down's Syndrome? If humans develop the ability to fiddle with who the next generations fundamentally are - their genetic makeup - where does that stop?
I would say that pretty much all the parents/caregivers of individuals with PWS would be in favor of their child/family member not having this frustrating, complex syndrome. I'm just not sure if we all really want to condone "genetically modified humans". I do hope that research can silence the hyperphagia for my daughter and all those with PWS...I also think, though, that being able to orchestrate a syndrome-free or disease-free human may have some troubling ramifications.
Later,
Jen
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