Gene Therapy Will Be A Vital Part Of Future Health Care
Online, May 2, 2011 (Newswire.com) - More than 60% of the people are of the opinion that gene therapy will be a vital part of future health care. Only 3% think that there is no future for gene therapy as it causes more problems than produce solutions. These are the results of an internet poll among the visitors of Gene Therapy Net.
"These results are very promising for the field of gene therapy", says Dr. D.A. Bleijs, owner and webmaster of Gene Therapy Net. "Over two hundred visitors of Gene Therapy Net responded to the poll. We launched this poll to find out if gene therapy would be considered as a standard treatment for several diseases in the near future. The experience is that the public is often skeptical of new science, like gene therapy. This is mainly due to fact of limited knowledge and the damaging effects of reports of several adverse events occurring in gene therapy trials". "As the majority of the responders agreed with the statement that gene therapy will be part of standard health care, 28% of the responders thought that more time was needed to evaluate potential of gene therapy", says Dr. Bleijs.
"It should be kept in mind that the outcome of this poll is somewhat colored as the visitors of Gene Therapy Net will have an interest in gene therapy and therefore will probably be less skeptical", states Dr. Bleijs. Nearly 6% were of the opinion that the treatment will work only for 'simple' inherited disease like X-SCID, whereas 3% didn't see any future for gene therapy.
The poll can be found at http://www.genetherapynet.com as a part of the website Gene Therapy Net. The poll started in July 2009 and over 200 visitors responded to the question what the future of gene therapy would be. There were four different answers: 1- A vital part of future health care; 2- Could be useful, but more time needed to evaluate potential; 3- Will work only for 'simple' inherited disease like X-SCID; and 4- No future as it cause more problems than produce solutions.
Gene therapy is an experimental treatment that involves introducing genetic material (genes) into a person's cells to fight or prevent disease. In most gene therapy studies, a normal gene is inserted into the body to correct an abnormal gene that is causing disease. Getting the gene into the body tissues where it is needed is a challenging and complex problem that researchers are trying to solve. Researchers are studying gene therapy for a number of diseases, such as severe combined immunodeficiency, blindness, hemophilia, Parkinson's disease, cancer and even HIV.