BMJ  2003;326:1410-1411 (28 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7404.1410

Editorial

What next for human gene therapy?

Gene transfer often has multiple and unpredictable effects on cells

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The high hope of genetic medicine for 30 years has been to develop a way of using recombinant DNA techniques to treat patients through the genes involved in their diseases. As Richard Roblin, scientific director of the Council on Bioethics of the President of the United States, put it in 1979: "There is something aesthetically compelling about cutting to the heart of the problem, by treating the disease at the molecular level, where it originates."1 Since 1990, this vision has generated a modest industry of bench research and animal studies, culminating in almost 1000 clinical trials in humans around the world, for a wide variety of diseases.2 In the past few years, however, the field has learned that in genetic medicine, as in war, the "surgical strike" is rarely as clean and effective as theory implies it should be.

After almost a decade without much clinical success,3 the field has . . . [Full text of this article]

Eric T Juengst, associate professor of bioethics

Department of Bioethics, School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106, USA


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