In this image from the 1983 story, thriving hamster cells on the left side of the image received a healthy gene to counteract a neurological disorder, while the circled, untreated cells are dying. (Courtesy of Thomas Caskey, Baylor College of Medicine)

In 1983, when only three genetic diseases could be detected effectively by screening tests and scientists knew very little about how genes were controlled, Technology Review argued that anticipated clinical trials of gene therapy would need to follow stringent guidelines, given the technology's previous failures. As ­Horace Freeland Judson explains in this issue (see "The Glimmering Promise of Gene Therapy"), not much has changed. Caught up in the promise of curing debilitating, life-shortening diseases by giving patients good copies of defective genes--and, it seems, eager for the glory of being the first to make gene therapy work in humans--some gene-therapy researchers have conducted sloppy, and even fatal, human trials in the intervening two decades.

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