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Nature Medicine 13, 1008 - 1009 (2007)
Published online: 31 August 2007 | doi:10.1038/nm0907-1008

Therapy on trial

Virginia Hughes1

  1. Virginia Hughes is a freelance writer based in New York.


The death of a participant in a gene therapy trial has thrown the entire field into question–as it did once before in 1999. Can the field survive this second setback? Virginia Hughes investigates.


Three weeks after receiving a second knee injection of an experimental gene therapy to treat her rheumatoid arthritis, 36-year-old Jolee Mohr lay unconscious at the University of Chicago Medical Center, breathing through a ventilator while her liver gave out. On 24 July, her family opted to remove life support.