"Abstract. This book is intended to examine the origins and development of the revolutionary new medical field of gene therapy. Understanding the history of gene therapy depends on an appreciation of the concept of disease, how it evolved in response to advances in science and Medicine from ancient cultures to modern times and, in particular, to the birth of human genetics. Central to that history has been the revelation that most human disease does not reflect magical or mystical actions of aggrieved deities but rather results from interactions of natural worldly factors with inherent normal and aberrant features of human biology. That knowledge identified foreign natural factors such as microbial agents responsible and that, in turn, led to discovery of methods such as vaccines and antibiotics to interfere with these exogenous disease-causing agents. Remarkably, Medicine has now developed tools and methods to control and alter the inherent factors that define both normal and aberrant human biology - i.e., genes, and made those factors suitable targets for therapy. Key words. Ancient concepts of health, disease and therapy, advances in medical sciences, Aesculapeus, Hippocrates, Galen, religion, aggrieved deities, communion with nature"--
Chronicles the origins and early developmental history of the new medical field of gene therapy. Friedmann examines the early failures and increasingly promising clinical "successes" for this new approach to cure genetic disease.
From the discoveries of the principles of genetic inheritance in the 19th century to the development of the concepts of human molecular genetic disease in the 20th century, the treatment of human disease has been transformed from a focus on symptoms to the goal of correcting underlying genetic defects which are the cause of many human diseases. Here, Theodore Friedmann shows that this scientific revolution in medicine compares in importance to Copernicus's demonstration of the sun-centered order of the planetary system, the 18th and 19th century discoveries of the cellular structure of living systems, germ theory of disease, the invention of anaesthesia, and the discovery that genetic information is stored and transmitted by DNA.
The Origin and Development of Genetic Therapies explores the origins and early developmental history of the medical field of gene therapy. Friedmann examines the early failures and increasingly promising clinical "successes" for this new approach to cure genetic disease and explores how the concepts of gene therapy can affect human hereditary and human evolution.
