Word: complexities
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...most complex traits, of course, would be the ones even the best detectives would have a hard time seeing: personality traits. If temperament is at least partly determined by genetic hard-wiring, somewhere in the vast tangle of human DNA there must be strands that influence behavior--including criminal behavior...
...ethical issues raised by techniques emerging from the genetics labs are likely to be even more complex. What if parents can use preimplantation genetic diagnosis to avoid having kids with attention-deficit disorder, say, or those predestined to be short or dullwitted or predisposed to homosexuality? Will they feel pressure from friends and relations to do so? And will kids who are allowed to be born with these characteristics be made to feel even more like second-class citizens than they...
This unequal access won't bring a rigid caste system a la Brave New World. The interplay between genes and environment is too complex to permit the easy fine-tuning of mind and spirit. Besides, in vitro fertilization is nobody's idea of a good time; even many affluent parents will forgo painful invasive procedures unless horrible hereditary defects are at stake. But the technology will become more powerful and user friendly. Sooner or later, as the most glaring genetic liabilities drift toward the bottom of the socioeconomic scale, we will see a biological stratification vivid enough to mock American...
Most researchers in the field agree that the adenovirus and retrovirus vectors are imperfect, to say the least. In addition to having immunological side effects, both lack the carrying capacity to accommodate the larger, more complex genes that would be useful in therapy. "There are only three problems in gene therapy," says Salk's Verma, "delivery, delivery and delivery. It isn't going to be a problem to make gene therapy work--if we have an appropriate set of tools to deliver the genes...
...worst case, maybe even a few decades away. The point is, we are just beginning to see how dramatically gene-based science can change the ways in which new drugs are discovered and developed. Blind luck will play an increasingly smaller role as scientists tease out the complex interplay between genes, proteins and the environment. There is going to be confusion--some setbacks and disappointments--at least at first. But most in the field agree that pharmaceutical research has finally entered its golden...