Details of a second case of cancer in a gene-therapy trial in France, revealed last week, raise the odds that both were therapy induced. In both cases, a retrovirus engineered to shuttle corrective genes into cells inserted itself in or near a cancer-causing gene, apparently triggering uncontrolled cell growth. The risks seem “surprisingly high,” says pediatrician Alain Fischer, who with Marina Cavazzana-Calvo led the trial at the Necker Hospital for Sick Children in Paris.
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Jocelyn Kaiser (2003) studied this question.