Picking Nits or Learning Lessons?
By Marcy Darnovsky and Osagie K. Obasogie,
Bioethics Forum
| 09. 17. 2007
Defensiveness on Display in Gene Therapy Death
The full story of 36-year-old Jolee Mohr's recent death in a gene therapy clinical trial for rheumatoid arthritis is still unfolding. The study, sponsored by Seattle-based Targeted Genetics, remains on hold. A team of 20 doctors and scientists at the University of Chicago Medical Center has combed through autopsy samples. The FDA has yet to announce the direct cause of death, and the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC) will discuss the case at its September 17 meeting.
There's a lot we don't yet know. But there's a fair amount we do know, and much of it is troubling. Gene therapy's high public profile has led journalists to investigate information released by Mohr's family that raises questions about the study's design, inclusion criteria, and conduct. Some are specific to the Targeted Genetics study while others are broader. Even if no one had died, a number of these issues would still be quite relevant given gene therapy's record to date: inconclusive at best, and certainly disappointing given the high hopes repeated over two decades.
One key concern is whether people whose...
Related Articles
By Emma McDonald Kennedy
| 07.11.2024
Louise Perry’s recent article in The Spectator cautions against “The quiet return of eugenics,” a threat she locates in preimplantation genetic testing for polygenic disorders. The technology is billed as a way for parents undergoing IVF to select which embryo to implant based on information about each embryo’s genetic risk factors and traits. These reports, she says, give parents “a very full picture of the adult that embryo could become”––from their child’s risk of developing different diseases to their “likely...
GATTACA was released in 1997, but — remarkably — is even more relevant now than it was then, as the technologies whose social implications it explores have developed considerably.
On Thursday, June 13, the California Film Institute presented GATTACA to a sold-out house at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center as part of their Science on Screen series. CGS Associate Director Katie Hasson offered framing for the film and participated in a Q+A discussion.
The film’s plot explicitly involves...
By Ellie Kincaid, Retraction Watch | 06.18.2024
Nature has retracted a 2002 paper from the lab of Catherine Verfaillie purporting to show a type of adult stem cell could, under certain circumstances, “contribute to most, if not all, somatic cell types.”
The retracted article, “Pluripotency of...