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Article: HUMAN GENE THERAPY: Harsh Lessons, High Hopes.(gene therapy has not lived up to its initial high hopes, but the future is looking more promising)
- Article from:
- FDA Consumer
- Article date:
- September 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 U.S. Government Printing Office. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A four-year-old girl named Ashanthi DeSilva from the suburbs of Cleveland lay on crisp white hospital sheets with a needle stuck in a vein. She didn't mind; this happened all the time in her chronically sick childhood. At the other end of the intravenous hookup hung a clear plastic bag of very special cells: her own white blood cells, genetically altered to fix a defect she inherited at birth.
A strikingly thin middle-aged doctor stared anxiously at the tiny figure. W. French Anderson, M.D., and his colleagues R. Michael Blaese, M.D., and Kenneth Culver, M.D., all then working at the National Institutes of Health, crossed a symbolic threshold with Ashanthi DeSilva ...