The Health Ministry said today that an experiment in genetic engineering performed at the Hadassah Medical Center here last July was fully in keeping with medical ethics. It involved the splicing of genes in an attempt to cure a patient of a hereditary blood ailment that often proves fatal and is believed to have been the first operation of its kind on a human subject.
The procedure was performed by Dr. Martin Cline who developed the technique in animal experi- ments at the University at California Los Angeles and Prof. Eliezer Rachmilowitz, head of the hematological department at the Hodassah Medical Center. The Health Ministry was unaware of the case until the story appeared in the Los Angeles Times this week. That paper reported that the U.S. government was investigating the case on suspicion that it was a dangerous experiment performed on humans.
But Dr. Yehoshua Weissbrot, acting Director General of the Health Ministry, said the operation was not an experiment to alter the genetic traits of a human being but an attempt to cure a patient of a dangerous illness.
PROCEDURE MAY BE SUCCESSFUL
The patient was a 21-year-old Israeli woman suffering from Beta Thalassemia Major, a condition caused by the inability to produce a component of normal hemoglobin, the molecule in red blood cells that carries oxygen from the lungs to the body tissues.
The doctors removed a small amount of blood narrow from the patient and spliced the cells to genes capable of producing the vital hemoglobin component. The spliced cells were then introduced to the patient in the hope that they would begin producing normal hemoglobin.
Cline and his team performed the same procedure on a 16-year-old girl in Naples. The conditions of both patients remained stable indicating that the procedure may be successful. Although the results will not be known for several months, the doctors believe that without the operation the patients’ conditions would have deteriorated, possibly resulting in death. Most patients with severe forms of the Oilment die in their late teens or early 20s.
Rachmilowitz, a world expert on Beta Thalassemia Major, said today that the operation was performed in accordance with regulations and with the approval of a special committee dealing with medical experiments on human beings.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
