I'm not an orthopedic doctor so I'm not aware of the best care of injuries/deterioration of the lower spine, but I think the interventions are fairly limited: rest, bracing, and surgery.
Bone marrow transplants are still an essential part of care for many blood cancers. However, a new approach called CAR T cell therapy is making changes at the margins and may eventually replace transplants.
Most cancers in adults is simply a function of age. Every time a cell divides in the body new changes to the DNA are accidentally introduced and over time they accumulate. Eventually these results in cancer.
There are other risk factors that matter (like one's genes or exposure to carcinogens like cigarette use or UV light) but for the most part it is just the body aging and losing control of normal checks on cellular proliferation.
Yes, cystic fibrosis or CF is a genetic disease cause by the inheritance of mutations in the gene CFTR from both parents ("autosomal recessive disease" is what we call this in genetics).
L5 is the fifth lumbar vertebrae in the spine. It's the last one before the sacrum.
The treatment for the cancer patient you're referring too is what's called a bone marrow transplant. It is the replacing of the whole system of blood cells with another. This is done for several different blood cancers.
There isn't currently a consensus among scientists about whether the human germline should be subject to editing with our current genome engineering tools (namely CRISPR/Cas9). There is a moratorium on this sort of research activity at the moment. However, I do think it is quite likely that in the near future genomic engineering will be used to resolve genetic disease resulting from mutations in a single gene. The likely candidate will be diseases like Cystic Fibrosis or a rare syndrome like Cowden. However, this type of intervention would only be available to parents using IVF to conceive. Genome engineering isn't currently a research or clinical practice because the technology has not reached a level of precision for use in human. Once this point is reached, the normal drug trial development process would still need to be conducted. It would also have to compete with other gene therapy modalities that don't affect the germline.
On your question about genome engineering for cosmetic or enhancement purposes: This is largely denounced by most mainstream scientists. The science is not exactly at a place where we would know which changes to make in the genome or when we do know the change would be so numerous as to be untenable. There are companies that are offering embryo selection where one can try to rig the genetic lottery of their own egg and sperm unions to optimize for certain traits (height, intelligence, longevity), but even these approaches are unproven in terms of whether they will reliably influence phenotypes as advertised.
In sum, genetic knowledge and technologies still require further refinement before they can be ethically and effectively used. When this happens, which I expect will happen in the near future, the sanctioned uses will be exclusively for medical purposes (solving inherited diseases) and be limited in scope. Constraints on the use of the technology will relax over time and genetic knowledge will grow so the far far future may indeed be deeply genetically engineered, though this is much less certain.
I'm not an orthopedic doctor so I'm not aware of the best care of injuries/deterioration of the lower spine, but I think the interventions are fairly limited: rest, bracing, and surgery.
Bone marrow transplants are still an essential part of care for many blood cancers. However, a new approach called CAR T cell therapy is making changes at the margins and may eventually replace transplants.
Most cancers in adults is simply a function of age. Every time a cell divides in the body new changes to the DNA are accidentally introduced and over time they accumulate. Eventually these results in cancer.
There are other risk factors that matter (like one's genes or exposure to carcinogens like cigarette use or UV light) but for the most part it is just the body aging and losing control of normal checks on cellular proliferation.
Yes, cystic fibrosis or CF is a genetic disease cause by the inheritance of mutations in the gene CFTR from both parents ("autosomal recessive disease" is what we call this in genetics).
L5 is the fifth lumbar vertebrae in the spine. It's the last one before the sacrum.
The treatment for the cancer patient you're referring too is what's called a bone marrow transplant. It is the replacing of the whole system of blood cells with another. This is done for several different blood cancers.
I am glad you found the piece clear!
There isn't currently a consensus among scientists about whether the human germline should be subject to editing with our current genome engineering tools (namely CRISPR/Cas9). There is a moratorium on this sort of research activity at the moment. However, I do think it is quite likely that in the near future genomic engineering will be used to resolve genetic disease resulting from mutations in a single gene. The likely candidate will be diseases like Cystic Fibrosis or a rare syndrome like Cowden. However, this type of intervention would only be available to parents using IVF to conceive. Genome engineering isn't currently a research or clinical practice because the technology has not reached a level of precision for use in human. Once this point is reached, the normal drug trial development process would still need to be conducted. It would also have to compete with other gene therapy modalities that don't affect the germline.
On your question about genome engineering for cosmetic or enhancement purposes: This is largely denounced by most mainstream scientists. The science is not exactly at a place where we would know which changes to make in the genome or when we do know the change would be so numerous as to be untenable. There are companies that are offering embryo selection where one can try to rig the genetic lottery of their own egg and sperm unions to optimize for certain traits (height, intelligence, longevity), but even these approaches are unproven in terms of whether they will reliably influence phenotypes as advertised.
In sum, genetic knowledge and technologies still require further refinement before they can be ethically and effectively used. When this happens, which I expect will happen in the near future, the sanctioned uses will be exclusively for medical purposes (solving inherited diseases) and be limited in scope. Constraints on the use of the technology will relax over time and genetic knowledge will grow so the far far future may indeed be deeply genetically engineered, though this is much less certain.