NYT: Gene Therapy Is Facing a Crucial Hearing (technology disappoints)

[DeepModem Mom]

Gene Therapy Is Facing a Crucial Hearing
By GARDINER HARRIS

Published: March 3, 2005


WASHINGTON, March 2 - Fifteen years after experiments with human gene therapy began in earnest, a federal drug advisory panel on Friday will discuss the death of a French child in one such experiment and why, after so many years of hope, the technology has been such a disappointment....

***

For years, gene therapy was heralded as a technology that would soon yield blockbuster drug innovations. The National Institutes of Health issued thousands of grants to pursue the research, hundreds of patents have been granted on the technology, and more than 150 biotechnology companies have been created in the last 15 years to exploit it. In 1997 alone, the peak year, 24 such companies were created, said Dr. Sheldon Krimsky, a professor at Tufts University.

Then, in 1999, a teenager, Jesse Gelsinger, died in a gene therapy experiment conducted by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. The death cast a pall over the entire field, and last month the university agreed to pay the government more than $500,000 to settle fraud allegations related to the case.

Gene therapy's disappointing history is mirrored in other medical technologies once highly promoted, like high-throughput chemical screening and the decoding of the human genome. Reaping the fruits of such technological advances is taking much longer than executives in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals once suggested. As a result, the industries are suffering a drought of new products and are trying to explain why their laboratories have burned through so much money in recent years with so little to show for it....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/03/politics/03gene.html

[Spinzonner]

1. Probably because it's more an experiment than a technology

[Maple]

2. It's a little early

to give up. Other countries certainly aren't.

If the US does, you'll regret it.

[SpiralHawk]

3. This gene stuff brings out my Inner Luddite

Just stop messing around with it, you big bunch of blinded-by-your-own-extremely-limited brilliance and lacking-in-wisdom scio-bio-geeks.

Remember: the Luddites were right! They said the Industrial Revolution would destroy families and erode family "values." But did the "Republicans" of that day listen? Hell no. There was money to be made. Screw the family. They probably figured, there will be fresh new ways to exploit people and "families" in the Times to Come and We RoyalAss Republicans will find those ways and fool the lumpen rabble once again.

HaHaHaHa ad infinitum demonic laughter....

[Blower]

4. Time for intellectuals in the US to move to Europe--

IN this technology and others....

[KingoftheJungle]

5. Giving up on gene therapy is giving up on human evolution

There is no other way we are going to advance without it.

[reprobate]

6. Gene therapy is the basis for some very effective cancer cures.

Lymphoma is now being succesfully cured (five and ten year survival in the 75-80% range) with technology that's a first cousin to gene therapy, and other cancers are about to be cured with this technology.

The therapy involves decoding the genes of the cancer cell, discovering the protiens that make up the anti-body receptors, and then manufacturing the anti-bodies that match the receptors. Since every cancer cell in the body is a clone of the original cell, they are identical and the therapy will work on all of them. This is new stuff and the technique is being researched for other cancers. We are on the verge of a CURE for cancer, and at the same time this nation is sinking into an anti-science attitude that will make us a third world country by the time we are bankrupted by the Imperial neocons.

Too bad. America started with such noble goals.

[stirringstill]

7. Science vs the con

Life is complex and gene therapy research, when defined broadly, has greatly increased our understanding of numerous biological processes that often have little to do with the intended goal as defined by a biotech investor--a profitable product to sell. Scientists are sometimes guilty of hyping their data, but more often than not nascent promising technologies are sold to gullible investors who understand hype better than the science. Too many well intentioned biotech efforts degenerate into a con game. Unrealistic expectations are both the life and death of many businesses.