Picking Nits or Learning Lessons?
        
            By Marcy Darnovsky and Osagie K. Obasogie, 
                Bioethics Forum 
             | 09. 17. 2007
        
            Defensiveness on Display in Gene Therapy Death 
                    
                                    
                    
                                                                                                                                    
                                                                            
                              
    
  
  
    
  
          
  
      
    
            The full story of 36-year-old Jolee Mohr's recent death in a gene therapy clinical trial for rheumatoid arthritis is still unfolding. The study, sponsored by Seattle-based Targeted Genetics, remains on hold. A team of 20 doctors and scientists at the University of Chicago Medical Center has combed through autopsy samples. The FDA has yet to announce the direct cause of death, and the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC) will discuss the case at its September 17 meeting.
There's a lot we don't yet know. But there's a fair amount we do know, and much of it is troubling. Gene therapy's high public profile has led journalists to investigate information released by Mohr's family that raises questions about the study's design, inclusion criteria, and conduct. Some are specific to the Targeted Genetics study while others are broader. Even if no one had died, a number of these issues would still be quite relevant given gene therapy's record to date: inconclusive at best, and certainly disappointing given the high hopes repeated over two decades.
One key concern is whether people whose...
 
       
 
  
 
    
    
  
   
                        
                                                                                
                 
                                                    
                            
                                  
    
  
  
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[OHSU News/Christine Torres Hicks]
On September 30th, a team of 21 scientists from Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) published a significant paper in Nature Communications, with a scientifically accurate but, to many, somewhat abstruse headline:
Induction of experimental cell division to generate cells with reduced chromosome ploidy
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