Reflection Post 3

One of many ways that HeLa cells are used today is to create the vaccine for polio. A positive for the polio vaccine is that it stimulates the production of the disease, so the cells stop deteriorating the muscular tissue. Another positive outcome of the Polio Vaccine is that it can cure polio but, your doctor has to prescribe the vaccine to you. “There is another vaccine made from the HeLa cells that can prevent polio it is recommended to be given from six weeks to eighteen years of age” (Polio, 2011).

Some negatives of the Polio vaccine are that they do not cure all of the stages and types of polio. One type of polio that can not be completely cured is Paralytic Polio. “Paralytic polio is the type of polio that causes paralysis” (Polio, 2011). The polio disease is a highly contagious disease so yes it is cureable.  It also can have a fatal defect also if it is a strand that can not be cured it gives people diagnosed with the disease.
Cancer treatment is another big treatment that HeLa is used for. HeLa is a string of DNA that has ninety-six chromosomes rather than forty-six chromosomes.  Doctors use HeLa to attack the cancer cells. “The treatments that doctors use HeLa in are chemotherapy, a new study done by MIT that pulling out the microRNA and inserting HeLa into the RNA to attack from the inside out” (Trafton, 2011)

. The critics of this experimental treatment think that this will work and help more then the chemotherapy.   On the political side of the research they believe that the cancer can be treated or the experiment is just a big waste of money. I think that attacking from the inside will help because,the HeLa cells will be attacking from the nucleus out once the nucleus is shut down and has died off. The cancer will not be able to function and will disappear.

One negative of the cancer treatments. Is that the cancer could not be affected and could grow more until it completely takes over the body. HeLa cells multiply in minutes and the origin of the HeLa cells is cancerous, “HeLa like most cells can change when being mutated and while being the “immortal” cell it is also called the “weed” of the labs the HeLa cell grows so quickly that it contaminates all other cell cultures” (Trafton, 2011)
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Works Cited

Polio. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.mamashealth.com/polio.asp

Trafton, A. (2011, September 2). Killing a cancer cell from the inside out synthetic biologists design a gene circuit that, when delivered to cancer cells, forces them to commit suici. Retrieved from http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/cancer-detection-circuit-0902.html