If so many (rich) people use gene therapy, why aren’t there a bunch of people walking around looking like clones?

Question

Does gene therapy only target certain harmful mutations? Why not change everything?

In: 0

Answer 1

Humans have tens of thousands of genes. Gene therapy only targets the gene causing the problem. That still leaves tens of thousands of genes which aren’t changed.

And why would they change all of the genes to fix a gene with a problem? On top of that it already costs tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands to change a gene. You’d pretty much literally have like $10b people walking around if you changed everything. That and even though it hasn’t been done you would have to assume to a high degree of likelihood that if you changed everything you’d most likely kill the person in the process.