Gene Therapy of 1990s

“ . . . the rise of gene therapy reflected a new kind of entrepreneurism. Over time the gene therapy phenomenon reflected the growing influence of financial speculation and venture capital in clinical research (Waterloo III, 95) . . . Even as they organized their experiments, researchers were also forming startup companies, raising funds for these innovative therapies and seeking a market for them. The new gene doctors, then, blurred the distinctions between scientist and salesman, surgical pioneer and drug innovator, playing a role not just in developing new drugs and techniques but in testing them and in promoting them as well (96). . . . “researchers [were] fully conscious of the financial import of their findings” (99) . . . At the heart of the problem was a potentially dangerous vehicle (the adenovirus) and an increasingly problematic relationship among clinician-researchers, CF patients and their families, entrepreneurial venture capital, and the biotechnology market” (101). . . . “The idea of gene therapy for cystic fibrosis filled an emotional need, but in the end it was a marketing myth, revealing more about the business culture and mainstream ideologies of the 1990s than about the actual potential of genetic technology” (110). . . . Throughout the 1990s it became increasingly clear that genetic medicine was not merely a benevolent enterprise dedicated to curing the sick people of the world but also a growing financial enterprise operating according to the edicts of the marketplace. . . . Clinical experiments were means toward a financial end; one such end was attracting investors with a steady stream of good news, bringing a promising product ever-closer to the market. In this sense the promise of genetic medicine took many of its meanings from the broader business culture of the 1990s and from the strategizing of a new type of researcher/entrepreneur, which was further blurring the lines between innovation for profit and patient care” (168, 169).