FDA Halts Gene Therapy Experiments @ The Washington Post
I contacted Dr. Alain Fischer once, read message here. And his response here.
FDA Halts Gene Therapy Experiments; By Rick Weiss, Washington Post Staff Writer, Thursday, March 3, 2005; 2:20 PM
The Food and Drug Administration has suspended several U.S. gene therapy experiments after learning that a third child who underwent treatment in France has developed cancer as a result, a development that has cast a pall over the struggling research field.
The events are the latest in a series of setbacks for a field that a decade ago seemed poised to revolutionize medicine by replacing defective genes with healthy ones, fixing the molecular underpinnings of disease instead of simply treating its symptoms.
After thousands of efforts, the treatments appear to have cured only about a dozen patients, all of them children in Europe who were born with a severe immune system disorder. With three of those children now having developed cancer from the treatments and one recently dying of it, even the field's most ardent supporters are discouraged.
"We want to continue, but of course there is a safety issue," said Alain Fischer of the Necker Hospital in Paris, the leader of the French study.
Read the complete article @ the Washington Post here.
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