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Gene
therapy attempts to treat or prevent a disease by delivering
genetic material into a person's cells.
Currently, gene
therapy is an experimental procedure. In the future it may be
used to treat ailments such as heart disease, inherited diseases
or cancers. In current trials genes
are added to the existing DNA
of cells, but it may soon be possible to actually replace a mutated
gene by cutting it out of the cells' DNA
and replacing it with a normally functioning gene. A mutated gene
is one in which the base
sequence is changed and so it does not perform the task within
our cells that we expect it to.
For more information about gene
therapy go to http://www.ornl.gov/hgmis/medicine/genetherapy.html
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