[Source: Health and Life Sciences Law Daily, Sept. 18, 2007]
The Washington Post (918, A4, Weiss) reports that according to a National Institutes of Health panel, "tests on an Illinois woman who died mysteriously in July after getting an experimental gene treatment show no evidence that she was killed directly by the genetically altered viruses she was given" by Targeted Genetics, a Seattle biotechnology company, but "further tests will have to be done to see if the treatment somehow contributed to her death, perhaps by leaving her vulnerable to a runaway fungal infection." The FDA "has placed the experiment on hold, and the case is being watched closely by leaders of other gene-therapy experiments."
The New York Times (9/18, A22, Pollack) notes that the woman, Jolee Mohr, "died on July 24 at the University of Chicago Medical Center, three weeks after trillions of genetically engineered viruses were injected into her right knee as a test of an experimental treatment for rheumatoid arthritis. The type of virus used as a gene carrier has widely been considered safe and is being used in 35 other trials."
