Helen Phillips

About the author: Helen Phillips is a writer for Nature, a biological and physical sciences magazine.

Medical procedures that attempt to cure diseases on a genetic level are known as gene therapy. Since the first gene therapy clinical trial in 1990, hundreds of unsuccessful trials have followed, including the death of eighteen-year-old Jesse Gelsinger during a 1999 attempt to cure his ornithine transcarboxylase deficiency. In addition, in 2002, a French boy thought to have been cured of his rare immunodeficiency disorder developed leukemia as a result of gene therapy. These major setbacks, however, have challenged researchers to reevalute their procedures, ethics, and goals and carefully study their shortfalls for the development of better, safer techniques. Since gene therapy is a new procedure, only time is needed to fully realize its potential benefits. When the obstacles and hazards...