
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 21, 1990                   TAG: 9003232496
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FIXING GENES AND CURING THE SICK?

SCIENTISTS have done marvelous things with biotechnology. By tinkering with the genes that contain nature's blueprints for every creature, they have been able to produce new vaccines for diseases, plentiful supplies of medicines such as insulin, cows that give 15 to 20 percent more milk, plants that resist diseases and insect attacks. The list is varied and long, and it lengthens daily.

Scientists have also covered a lot of ground in understanding the way our own genes affect our lives and health, making some of us vulnerable to this ailment or that addiction. But they hadn't been able to do a lot with this understanding. They've been like automotive mechanics who can spot the mysterious cause of the sputtering motor but have no replacement part.

Theoretical knowledge took a long step out of the laboratory this month. The Institutional Biosafety Committee of the National Institutes of Health held the nation's first public hearing on a human-gene therapy project. Then without opposition, the 12-member panel of scientists and lay people approved the procedure as safe.

The project must undergo scrutiny by a half-dozen other federal regulatory committees. But before the year's end, researchers may begin clinical trials of a genetic treatment for young children with adenosine deaminase deficiency. ADA is a genetic disorder that destroys immune systems; the famed "bubble boy" in Texas a few years ago had to live most of his life in a sterile plastic enclosure to guard against infection.

Researchers at the National Cancer Institute plan to take blood from ADA patients, isolate certain cells, grow them in the laboratory and infect them with a genetically engineered virus. "Infect" may not be the most felicitous term for lay people, but it describes how scientists will spread within these cells an organism to correct the defective gene causing ADA. The cells will then be infused back into the patient, where they should arrest the disease.

Not all the researchers' questions are answered. Improvement may be temporary; patients may need further infusions for a while. But this is the most promising development yet in gene therapy, which researchers think may also be useful against other genetic ailments such as cystic fibrosis, familial cholesterol disorders and metabolic liver problems.

The news would be more electrifying if the scientists had announced a cure for cancer, which may well have a genetic cause. Still, there is something especially satisfying in that this advance holds promise of helping children. To a great extent we are all prisoners of our genes; therein can lurk weaknesses we do not suspect. But diseases that strike at a tender age seem all the more cruel.

Ethical questions persist about biotechnology. Critics such as Jeremy Rifkin warn that it can lead to "reductionist" views in which creatures, including humans, become nothing more than the sum of their parts - parts that can freely be puttered with. There is no way, probably not even under totalitarian government, to guard against every possible misuse of this knowledge.

But in the scientific community itself, there seems to be commensurate concern. Proof of that lies in the hurdles the new ADA therapy must clear - including, on March 30, examination by the Human Gene Therapy Subcommittee. That is a division of the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee of the National Institutes of Health. The panel comprises 25 scientists, legal scholars and ethicists, and its approval is required for experiments of this kind to use human beings. It is no rubber stamp. So far, the most important genetic knowledge appears to be in safe and caring hands.

by CNB