Question

question/ biomedical ethics

What happened to jesse gelsinger? How could it have been avoided? what role does greed play these cases?

can you please make sure the answer at lesat be 11to13 sentence thank you!

Answer 1

Jesse Gelsinger was a 17 year old boy who had a genetic disorder known as ornithine transcarbamylase (OTC) deficiency. This enzyme is one of the important enzymes in the urea cycle responsible for the breakdown of toxic ammonia in liver to urea and its removal from the body. Since Jesse Gelsinger was deficient of OTC, he was unable to break down the ammonia and had a risk of excessive ammonia formation in the body. This condition was regulated by non-proteinaceous diet and he survived the condition fairly well since his birth. But in 1999, he decided to volunteer for a study related to gene therapy for OTC deficiency, where an adenovirus was used as a vector to transfer the functional gene into his liver. He received the injection containing the vector and after four days he died due to failure of multiple organs.

Ethically, he should have been correctly informed about the past results of the experiment performed on animals or other subjects, if any. But he was misled, and was informed about non-severity of the virus and would lead to no complications in his body. The adenovirus injected into the past studied animals and other subjects also led to sickness in them. For such gene therapy study, an healthy volunteer should be taken instead of a person already with a genetic disease, and should be informed completely about the past results of the particular experiments, so that he can make a sound decision regarding his volunteership.

It was also considered that the Scientist who conducted the above mentioned experiment, was looking for his financial gain through devising adenovirus as a potential gene therapy agent. If he would have been successful, he could commercialize the vector and receive monetary benefits. It can be safely said that due to his greed, he overlooked the potential danger of subjecting an human life to the study which had not been proved successful in even test animals. So, greed plays an important role in such cases where the scientists unethically use human lives just for financial benefits, without considering the value of an individual life.