A few hours before she died this summer at the age of 36, Jolee Mohr lay in a Chicago hospital so swollen by internal bleeding and her failing kidneys that her husband decided against bringing their five-year-old daughter to say goodbye. The girl wouldn't have recognized her mother.
Robb Mohr couldn't bring himself to watch her die and he spent his wife's last hours talking with her helpless and puzzled doctors. One vowed to get to the bottom of the illness, and there were several clues to go on.
The most unusual was this: Jolee Mohr got sick the day after her right knee was injected with
trillions of genetically engineered viruses in a voluntary experiment to find out if gene therapy might be a safe way to ease the pain of rheumatoid arthritis. She was dead three weeks later.
The sponsor of this nationwide experiment, Targeted Genetics Corp. of Seattle, has halted the work and 127 patients are being evaluated, according to a company spokeswoman. No other problems have been reported, and the company believes patients were adequately informed of the treatment's risks.
U.S. health officials are investigating Mohr's death, and the case is expected to be discussed Monday by advisers to the National Institutes of Health during a meeting in Bethesda, Md. There's a lot at stake, including answers for Robb Mohr, and the interests of Targeted Genetics. But there are also questions about how medical studies are done and how much study volunteers are told of the risks.
source: medbroadcast.com
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