GENE THERAPY
Medicine For Your Genes

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Program Summary

Producer: John Rudolph
Aired Beginning: November 1998

Imagine a cure for cancer in an injection. Imagine medicine that changes the genetic code inside your body. Imagine a treatment that can conquer our most serious diseases - a medicine delivered to our cells by a virus much like the one that causes the common cold, or even AIDS.

Gene therapy holds the prospect of great hope as well as the danger of the unknown, as researchers, scholars, doctors, and patients weigh the benefits and the risks of a medical treatment that's still in its infancy.

The goal of gene therapy is to cure disease by treating it on the genetic level. The possibility of success in this effort has spawned a great deal of speculation and an equal amount of controversy. It has also generated a vast quantity of research fueled by millions of dollars in public and private funds.

Gene therapy is not a medical miracle - at least not yet. Still, some people with deadly diseases are willing to take the huge risk of trying an experimental medicine. In this show, we follow the case of one of them: Don Hardy, a 66-year-old former construction worker who has mesothelioma, a form of incurable lung cancer. Hardy is the first to receive a highly experimental form of gene therapy treatment. Choosing to reject conventional treatment in favor of gene therapy, he becomes a "human guinea pig." The DNA Files accompanies Hardy throughout his ordeal, as his doctor tells him the results of his latest x-rays and as he contemplates his fate both with and without gene therapy.

Though around 3,000 people have been treated by gene therapy, no one has ever been cured. If gene therapy does produce a cure someday, it's sure to be big business. What impact will it have on health care and health insurance? Who will be able to afford it? Explore the ethics and attitudes behind potential treatments that will be part of an enormous biotech marketplace.

Then, imagine the future for yourself.

Last Updated: July 2004