Gene-Therapy Successes Spur Hope for Embattled Field
Thursday, August 25, 2011 - 06:00
in Health & Medicine
From Nature magazine.When it was first used in the 1990s to treat an immune deficiency, gene therapy -- treating diseases by correcting a patient's faulty genes -- was touted as a breakthrough that was likely to cure scores of hereditary diseases. But when 18-year-old Jessie Gelsinger died in 1999 after having a corrected gene injected to treat his liver disease, the field became wary, and researchers found it difficult to fix the problems associated with the technique. [More]