Safe and Transducted!, page-32

Well, I am a medical man, and I took the announcement as a huge positive.

We are talking about genetic engineering here. Re-making the genome of a person, well at least in liver cells. Very powerful stuff. It is not like drug x, where low doses are fine but a big dose is toxic. No, even very low doses might cause problems. So I breathed a sigh of relief that there were no problems.

Secondly, it is great news that it actually worked in terms of delivery to liver cells and successful transduction/transfection. Those cells, maybe 1 in a thousand, have had their genetic code, their DNA, irreversibly changed.

We don't know what the therapeutic dose will be to achieve a high enough percentage of liver cells altered to be able to cure Hepatitis C yet, it may be more effective than in apes or it might be less so. Even very low doses might prove effective. Anyway, the first step has been successful. So yes, I'm excited.