Disclosure in Genetic Research and Therapy

An anonymous reader writes "The San Jose Mercury News has an interesting article on conflicts between financial pressure and scientific integrity in genetic research. For-profit experimenters tend to advertise (loudly) positive results and forget about pesky side effects. "

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[ATKeiper]

Personally, I suspect that wider concerns (only partly related to money) have forced these gene therapy researchers to keep their failures as quiet as possible - especially fear of public backlash.

Their research is extremely important, but there is a great deal of ignorance about the possibilities for and risks involved with gene therapy and other genetic research. Just as the cloning of Dolly triggered an enormous public response, many researchers in this and other biotech fields fear getting bad press. Based on the political pressure they have faced in the past two months because of the unreported "serious adverse events" in their trials, I would say their fears were well-founded. In fact, in the past months many gene therapy projects have slowed or even halted because of the political pressure.

That's not to say that financial worries have had no effect - it's just that those concerns are part of a bigger picture.

If you're interested in reading more about this and related issues in biotech, see the Biotech page of the Center for the Study of Technology and Society .

- A. Keiper