Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
6
Gene Therapy
to Treat Disease
THE ASHANTI DE SILVA CASE
It is a warm September day in 1990. Inside a hospital room in
Bethesda, Maryland, Ashanti de Silva, a 4-year-old girl who is small for
her age, lies wide-eyed as doctors, nurses, and her parents stand around
her hospital bed, watching a nurse hook up something to the needle in
her arm. She has experienced only a few healthy days throughout much
of her short life and has frequently been subjected to poking, prodding,
and injections. We can imagine their thoughts. She doesn't understand
what is going on, but her parents do. Ashanti knows the look on her
father's face, but he says over and over that this will not hurt; it is just
another needle in her arm and she is getting used to that. The worried
look on Ashanti's dad's face comes from knowing that what the
doctors are doing to his daughter has never been done before.
The doctors are injecting Ashanti's own blood cells into her
arm. The blood cells have been treated in a lab with a virus related
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