Gene Therapy Trials Halted.... Again

It seems that a third child has contracted cancer after receiving gene therapy for a rare childhood illness. The original article can be viewed at nature.com, but unfortunately you need to have a membership. I will be attempting to download the article over the next several hours; the site is currently being difficult. If someone really needs to see the article, u2u me, and I'll see if I can send you a .pdf via email.

However, the point of the article is quite clear. Despite the exponential increase in knowledge in the molecular biology field, we are still a ways off from being able to productively manipulate the genomes of complex multi-cellular organisms like humans.

It's an interesting problem though. Rare childhood illness... potentially treatable with experimental therapies... however the risks of the experimental therapy thus far seem to be cancer or death.