X-Message-Number: 12405
Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1999 13:48:30 -0700
From: Tim Freeman <>
Subject: Culture shock: Genetic therapty for Amish disorder

From: "Robert Moore" <>
>"We're going to involve 3 to 5 pediatric patients already identified with 
>Crigler-Najjar, who live in the Amish country in Pennsylvania," Steer told 
>Reuters Health. He commented that the Amish have a very high frequency of 
>this disorder and that these particular children all have the same genetic 
>defect, a mutation at a single point in the genetic code.

Thanks much for forwarding the interesting article.

Can you imagine the response of Amish parents to some dude in a white
lab coat coming by who wants to experimentally rewrite their child's
DNA?  They really should have picked a different genetic disorder to
start with.  Sickle-cell anemia, for instance, is also a change to
only one base pair, but it doesn't happen in a group with religious
aversions to high technology.

Hmm, maybe there are technical reasons for their choice?  Perhaps the
liver is easier to get drugs into than the bone marrow.

>A MORE IMPORTANT QUESTION:  (What do the anti-aging experts on Cyronet 
>think?)  Could this (chimeraplasty) or a derivative technique be used to 
>stop genetically "programmed" aging processes???

I don't know.  It seems that understanding aging better would be a
prerequisite to using the technique.  If the technique only works on
nuclear DNA, and aging is driven by damage to mitochondrial DNA, then
it won't make much difference to the central problem.  I can easily
imagine the technique being good for cleaning up miscellaneous
problems caused by aging.

-- 
Tim Freeman       
            http://www.infoscreen.com/resume.html
Web-centered Java, Perl, and C++ programming in Silicon Valley or offsite

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