The Three Levels of Coolness in Gene Therapy Articles

My topic for the Issues Paper is gene therapy. Gene therapy is the science of using altered gene sequences in viral vectors and oncolytic (cancer-killing) viruses to alter human DNA in specific tissues to kill cancer cells and prevent or cure severe genetic disorders. The most famous feat of gene therapy thus far has been Alain Fischer's gene therapy for severe combined immune deficiency (SCID) patients. He was able to successfully use viral vectors to cure 9 of 10 SCID patients... only one died of complications related to the therapy. This is actually really incredible, because normally all of these children would have died within their first few years of life.

But on to my sources... the most credible of my three sources was an article entitled, "Viral Therapy for Glioblastoma," from the May/June 2003 issue of The Cancer Journal, a highly reputable source for current cancer research. The only thing about this source that might that make it a bit less desirable than others is that it is five years old. Especially when you're talking about science, this could be very outdated information. However, from the background research that I've done concerning this topic, the science of gene therapy is not progressing very fast due to general tentativeness and government restrictions because there have been a few patient deaths associated with clinical gene therapy trials. This article, however, was full to the brim of techincal terms, intutive scientific perspectives, and current research (or at least as of 2003). Every author listed has an MD and a PhD.

My article of 'medium' credibility, "The Glimmering Promise of Gene Therapy," was from a more popular science magazine, Technology Review, not a scholarly journal. However, this article provided an interesting and (as far as I can tell) accurate overview of the the history of gene therapy research. The author does not have an advanced degree, but is quite prolific and has authored many well-respected science books and written lots of articles on various scientific topics. Also, a healthy portion of the article was derived from personal interviews that the author had with prominent gene therapy scientists such an Alain Fischer. While this article can't boast the hardcore scholarly credibility of the one from The Cancer Journal, I believe that it is still a good source for background research and an "interview perspective."

Finally, my least credible source was the "Gene Therapy" article from Wikipedia. While there was some important basic information in this article and it might be an okay resource for someone who had a primitive curiosity in gene therapy, there were a lot of holes in the information presented and the facts were basic and conceptual with little scientific backing. It was evident that many different people had edited the article... some of whom didn't even finish what they started. Like I said, it might be a good overview for some random person who just wanted to know was gene therapy was, but for my Issues paper, I will definitely be looking for more scholarly, indepth, scientifically-based sources than Wikipedia.