climate fixes need testing

2 November 2013 | NewScientist | 5

IN TECHNOLOGY, it is called the hype cycle: what initially seems a promising breakthrough leads to inflated expectations – until it becomes clear that a great deal of time, money and effort will be needed to realise that promise. Disillusionment sets in until the first real successes are reported, and then the hype is on again.

So it has gone with gene therapy. When, in the late 1980s, the genes for debilitating inherited diseases began to be identified, many believed that cures were within reach, by replacing the faulty genes with working ones. But getting the right gene into the right place without doing more harm than good proved tricky. Now, 23 years after the first gene therapy trial for a rare immune disease called ADA-SCID, researchers finally have some successes to report (see page 8).

Still, a major barrier remains: cost. The first gene therapy drug to be approved for clinical use, to treat a pancreatic disease, is also the world’s most expensive drug. At the moment, the production of modified viruses – the vectors used to shuttle genes into a person’s cells – is prohibitively

expensive, meaning only a handful of those with the diseases in question can be treated.

Pharmaceutical companies may have the means and know-how to scale up production, but inherited genetic diseases are not common. So the industry has been reluctant to invest in treatments for them, preferring

instead to channel cash towards bigger killers like cancer.

By a stroke of fortune, a promising form of cancer treatment relying on immunotherapy uses the same viral vector that gene therapists are working on to treat diseases like SCID: a modified version of the virus that causes HIV. Some 700 trials using this kind of safer vector are under way, treating a range of degenerative and immune disorders.

It may seem ironic that a virus that has killed so many holds the potential to yield a cure for a host of other deadly diseases, but such is scientific progress: it comes from unexpected places. That should give fresh grounds for the pharma industry to look again at gene therapy. With a bit of ingenuity and effort, gene therapy might finally live up to the hype. n

Live up to the hype

EDITORIAL

An unlikely hero could help gene therapy hit the big time

YOU might think that giving people free rein to experiment with technologies that could cool the planet is a recipe for chaos. But as things stand, pretty much anyone could carry out field tests at will. Most geoengineering exists in a legal void (see page 14).

Should we let tests go ahead? Our copious emissions of carbon dioxide, among other things,

mean we are already carrying out huge, unplanned experiments with the climate. Letting a few more proceed, particularly ones intended to improve matters, might be more pragmatic than waiting the decades it might well take to agree international treaties that set out what is acceptable.

But such tests are likely to have unintended consequences, maybe

including damage to health or ecosystems across international boundaries. They could even be weaponised – by creating acid rain, say, or killing fish stocks.

So some degree of oversight is desirable. It would be good to notify the neighbours when tests are about to begin. And some monitoring, perhaps through the UN or its Framework Convention on Climate Change, would be well advised. Vigilance, after all, is the price of freedom. n

Climate fixes need testing

“It may seem ironic that a virus that has killed so many could yield a cure for other deadly diseases”

ADVANCES in physics often result from observations that don’t fit theory: the Michelson-Morley experiment, for example, saw no universal ether, paving the way for Einstein’s relativity.

That successful theory is itself hard to square with one of the most universal observations of all. Relativity, and many subsequent physical theories, kill off the notion that time flows – but every human alive will argue otherwise.

Well, almost every human: some physicists are resigned to the “block universe”, with its

static time. Others, however, feel that any theory that doesn’t accommodate our experience must be flawed (see page 34).

Despite their efforts, the passage of time still remains elusive (see page 10). Will we ever come to an understanding with the universe? To coin a phrase: time will tell. n

Cracking an eternal puzzle

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climate fixes need testing

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