This week’s readings were really interesting. However, I felt that in order to understand more about prions and how these diseases worked, I needed to look up more details online. A common problem that I found by researching prions is the fact that the articles were really hard to understand because they came from a scientific point of view and included many terms that I personally did not know. However, even by researching more I still don’t understand how PrPsc has the ability to mutate PrPc into becoming PrPsc.
By looking through the internet, I realized how important the study of prions and their effects are. The example that kept popping up was the example of Mad Cow disease, which plagued the world years ago. However, I was surprised to discover that there are quite a few such diseases that have existed and that science hasn’t been able to solve the problem and find a cure. The transmission of such diseases is through blood transfusions or by eating the infected animals (as we saw with the example in class of the people eating the diseased people who had the disease). If prion research had been more advanced, it might have been possible to cure the Mad Cow disease or even identify which cows had the disease through tests, since the blood work was not able to show the infection. This would also allow us to understand better why certain animals were immune to the disease and maybe would be able to imitate them and cure the disease.
I wonder whether it would be okay to give up innocent humans in the name of science in order to discover more about the disease. This is something that is connected to last week’s class about morality in science. The question that keep popping up in my mind is the philosophical question of whether it is morally okay to give up one innocent person in order to save three? And, what will happen if we start seeing the world through this lens.