Jesse Gelsinger Research Paper

The Death of Jesse Gelsinger and the Gene Therapy Experiment In September of 1999, the Institute of Human Gene Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania ran an experiment in which Jesse Gelsinger participated (Rowe, 2000). The experiment consisted of an ornithine transcarbamylase gene therapy, wherein participants would increase their abilities to eliminate ammonia (Rowe, 2000). Because Gelsinger had a genetic disease (called ornithine transcarbamylase or OTC) which caused him to have difficulties in releasing ammonia from his body, he seemed to be an ideal participant (Kolehmainen, 2000). Unfortunately, neither Jesse nor his father were aware before the commencement of the experiment that several monkeys had died from the therapy, and human participants had been suffering adverse effects from the experiment (Rowe, 2000). Also, Jesse Gelsinger and the other participants involved were not
However, Gelsinger died from organ failure only a few days after receiving the therapy (Kolehmainen, 2000). Following Gelsinger’s death, the FDA and the NIH conducted an interrogation into the experiment, and found the informed consent document Gelsinger had signed differed from the one the agency approved, as Gelsinger’s document failed to mention that several monkeys had died in previous experiments with the gene therapy (Kolehmainen, 2000). The result of Gelsinger’s death led the NIH to receive “691 reports of ‘serious adverse events’ in gene therapy experiments (Kolehmainen, 2000, para. 10). After receiving the report of Gelsinger’s death, the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Public Health held a hearing for the gene therapy experiments to learn how to better protect human participants (Rowe,