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As policymakers struggle in the coming months to find ways of keeping patients better informed about the perils of gene therapy, scientists will be struggling to find safer, more effective ways of introducing corrective bits of dna into the human body. But cutting-edge medical research is never risk-free. "The bottom line is that we are embarking on a new age of therapy," says Dr. Yuman Fong of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. "There will be untoward side effects, and people may die from these therapies."
"The way I like to think about it," says Estuardo Aguilar-Cordova of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, "is that we've finished Chapter One of a very long book. We've had the introduction, the expectations out of line with reality, and a tremendous amount of hype. Now we're seeing a closure to Chapter One and we're beginning Chapter Two, this time with more realistic expectations."
This development is something that everyone, including Jesse Gelsinger's father, can embrace. "I am not against gene therapy," Paul Gelsinger said last week. "I realize it holds so much promise for so many people. But we cannot allow what happened to Jesse to happen again."
--With reporting by David Bjerklie and Alice Park/New York and Dick Thompson/Washington