Experimental Treatment Restores Some Vision

Scientists for the first time have used gene therapy to dramatically improve sight in people with a rare form of blindness. Experts called this a major advance for the experimental technique. Some vision was restored in four of the six young people who got the treatment. Two of the volunteers who could only see hand motions were able to read a few lines of an eye chart within weeks.It is a phenomenal breakthrough and if successful in larger numbers, the technique has the potential to reverse blindness from other kinds of inherited eye diseases. "It is incredibly exciting" said Dr. Jean Bennett, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Pennsylvania."It is the beginning of a whole new phase of studies." I think this is a great development, don't you?

"Bubble Boy" Develops Leukaemia

One of the boys with no immune system being treated with pioneering gene therapy at Great Ormond Street in London has developed leukaemia according to his doctors. They said they had been braced for this as cancer was an acknowledged risk of this treatment for X-SCID, commonly known as boy in the bubble syndrome. A trial in France of a similar therapy was halted in 2002 after four of eleven children developed leukaemia. So far ten children have been treated at the London hospital.