What are the problems with gene therapy?
Doctors use a virus to carry the healthy genes into a patient’s cells. They inactivate the virus so that it does not cause a serious infection. But in one study the virus was not as safe as researchers had thought. The result was the death of an 18-year-old patient – his organs failed as a result of an immune reaction to the virus. Many studies however have used viruses to carry new genes into cells perfectly safely. The other potential problem with gene therapy is that scientists have no control over which section of the DNA the new gene will insert into. This has led to two cases of leukaemia as a result of gene therapy treatment for SCID. The new gene inserted into the children’s DNA at a point where it caused the cells to become cancerous, and the children developed leukaemia. But there have also been many cases where the gene has inserted into DNA without any harmful effect. Because of these problems, scientists are investigating ways of getting genes into cells without relying on
