Faculty Bibliography

Just a year ago there was a burgeoning literature in the popular press bemoaning the slow pace of research in gene therapy. A lengthy article in The New York Times Magazine profiled the problems faced by the parents who could not get their little boy, who was severely disabled by Canavan's disease, enrolled in a gene-therapy experiment. The key question raised in the article was: Why is the pace of gene therapy so slow? This is the same magazine that a year later finds itself wondering how the pace of gene therapy could be permitted to be so fast

Tremendous controversy has surrounded efforts to undertake research on totipotent human stem cells. To date public policy in the United States has attempted to skirt the ethical and social questions raised by this research. Annas et al. argue that research using human embryos as a source of totipotent stem cells can secure broad public support if there is an open and public discussion about the ethical justification for undertaking such research and the assurance of adequate federal regulation and oversight.