Hi, Mike. Gee, that URL works for me. Course its a local paper for you and you mighty have a proximity problem!:-} I'll paste a hunk of it here... It's pretty chatty stuff about French Anderson, but a pretty good overall pop description of what Gene Therapy is all about. pax et bonum, mch
ty ones that cause such diseases as cystic fibrosis
and sickle-cell anemia. But in nearly every case thus far, the
lifesaving genes haven't taken.
They've been repelled, disabled or simply lost in the body's vast
genetic code. Even the field's father, Dr. W. French Anderson, a
once-tireless promoter of the approach and its promise, has
grown weary of failure.
Now, Anderson is proposing a radical alternative - a new way to
evade the body's defenses and coax a patient's DNA into
accepting lifesaving hitchhiker genes.
He wants to inject healthy genes directly into fetuses to repair
flaws certain to threaten an unborn child's future. He believes the
metamorphosing biology and feeble immune systems of fetuses
may pose fewer biological barriers.
New and troubling questions
But the idea is fraught with questions so new and troubling that
researchers and bioethicists admit they have no idea how to
proceed.
Repairing fetal genes involves charting a course into new medical
territory, a place where mother and child are patients and therapy
on a single fetus could accidentally change the reproductive cells -
or "germ line" - which control the characteristics of countless
generations of descendants.
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