Re: pill turns on gene therapy

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
20 Jan 1999 20:13:23 +0100

"david gobel" <davegobel@erols.com> writes:

> WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 (UPI) - Scientists have combined the morning-after
> abortion pill and a bio-engineered cold virus to deliver a genetic switch
> into the body that can be flipped on to produce therapeutic substances only
> when needed. Dr. Bert O'Malley, of Houston's Baylor College of Medicine,
> told United Press International the method opens the door to fighting
> conditions ranging from cancer to anemia. His experiment produced high
> levels of human growth hormone in mice without causing an immune response
> that might destroy the virus. His findings are reported in Tuesday's issue
> of the Proceedings of the National Academy of sciences.

Darn! I just printed out the article and was planning to be first with it with my "this weeks finds" posting :-)

(ah, the sinful pleasures of having access to lots of online journals. Now I got IEEE too! I will never get any work done!)

As the commentary points out, the technique is not completely novel, it is a combination of several already developed methods. It is definitely a step in the right direction.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y