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by oatmeal_croc 622 days ago
I must admit I'm not a very medically literate person - someone please break this down - is this good news or bad news? Were we expecting more people or lesser people to develop blood cancer?
3 comments

We didn't expect the rate of oncogenesis from off-target gene insertion. It's bad news.

At the same time, this is a treatment for a terrible, terrible disease; so far the consequences seem smaller than what cerebral adrenoleukodystrophy would deal out on its own.

So it's bad news about something which is probably still a good therapy (but we sure would like a better one).

Another takeaway, particularly for the HN crowd is that gene therapy both works and still has some major kinks to iron out
People dying of cancer as a consequence of treatment is typically bad news especially all within a few years of treatment.
It is bad news for anyone wanting to use gene therapy for treating any non lethal disease.