I believe that there is a group of scientists who have successfully used retroviruses in order to cure red/green color blindness in monkeys by setting the packet that is injected to be the gene combination for growing the red/green sensors in your eyes. They then injected the virus into the monkeys' eyes and within about a month the monkeys were able to see red and green when they couldn't before. Personally I think that this will really open up the worlds of gene therapy and grant us the ability to significantly alter genomes without being limited to doing so before birth.
Here's the relevant article: link
I was fortunate enough to attend a lecture, held at my campus, that was given by Dr. Neitz, the principal investigator in the research group.
You lucky, lucky person.
Anyways, I think that we are almost certain to start to tap into these new things (though wings are still probably gonna be impossible for quite a while, but you could at least get the ability to see in the dark!) within the next 50 years or so. I mean there are already several more radical gene therapies similar to this that started the process for clinical trials a few years back, (For those of you unfamiliar with the length of time, it usually takes around a decade for most "already working" treatments to move completely through the approval/trial process, though it can take much longer then that.) so we should be starting to see some of these coming out at the end of the decade.
Sadly I am also fairly certain that the first truly human bioengineering that becomes publicly available is
not going to come out in the U.S. This is due to the large percentage of religious people in the U.S. that are religiously against "tampering with gods plan" and the elected officials they have put into office. (It's one of the interesting things considering that almost all of the founding fathers were deists, not christians. It's interesting to see the difference between "Merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy, nor capable of explanation then the incoherences of our own nightly dreams" [Thomas Jefferson on the Book of Revelation] and "If you are not electing Christians, tried and true, under public scrutiny and pressure, if you're not electing Christians then in essence you are going to legislate sin." [Katherine Harris, Secretary of State for Florida] But I digress here.) My main point is simply that regardless of the technology developed and the lives that it can save, the religious vote in the U.S. will continue to limit the possibilities of those technologies deemed "anti-god" by some. Just as a last example you can look at stem cells (which were pointed out earlier in the thread). Technically stem cell research
does have the possibilities to cure just about anything. It's just that because the original technology (infant stem cells) was deemed "bad" by religious groups with political power, it wasn't until an alternative (adult stem cells) was discovered that the technology truly began to be useable, and even then it has some fairly strong limits on it. As such I believe that when immortality does first come out, you are gonna need to go to some country other then the U.S. or other highly religious countries (Middle eastern countries for example) to obtain the treatments.
Note: I'm not trying to make fun of our insult any other religions here with my post, nor am I attempting to apply the largest belief in the U.S. (christianity) upon other religions. I am simply pointing out some of the interesting contrasts and the ideas furthered by the main group in power and what effects I believe that will have.
Author
Topic: Retroviruses and other biological wizzkiddery (Read 5019 times)