This is excellent news:
There may be a new potential sickle cell breakthrough for those who suffer with the disease.
According to the National Institutes of Health, a Mobile man is the first Alabamian to become sickle cell free through a new gene therapy clinical trial they conducted.
Via Facebook.
Apparently, what they’re doing here is using a modified version of HIV — as in, one that won’t kill you — to deploy repaired bone marrow stem cells. …Yes, that there is hardcore bleeding edge science fiction, folks. Only, you know, it’s actually happening. Sometimes the future’s pretty cool.
Moe Lane
PS: Amusingly, Bruce Sterling predicted that precisely this would happen in his short story “Our Neural Chernobyl.” At more or less this point in time, too. Which is actually… a bit worrying, because that was a throwaway line in a story about a biotech catastrophe.
The sickle cell is actually an adaptation against malaria. While it sucks for those with actual sickle cell sucks, the carrier of the trait is highly resistant to that parasyte.