Ashanthi Desilva

". . . A great day for the world. A great day for medicine. Gene therapy has been approved. Our daughter is the first patient in the world to receive it." Those were the words that a tired but exhilarated Van DeSilva penned into her personal journal on the evening of Sept. 14, 1990. Her 4-year-old daughter, suffering from an extremely rare and fatal disease that cripples the immune system, had just made medical history. Ten days earlier, at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

". . . A great day for the world. A great day for medicine. Gene therapy has been approved. Our daughter is the first patient in the world to receive it." Those were the words that a tired but exhilarated Van DeSilva penned into her personal journal on the evening of Sept. 14, 1990. Her 4-year-old daughter, suffering from an extremely rare and fatal disease that cripples the immune system, had just made medical history. Ten days earlier, at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

The first newborns to undergo gene therapy are healthy and the inserted genes are working normally nearly two years after the procedure, researchers from Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles will announce today. Dr. Donald B. Kohn of Childrens, head of the team that performed the therapy, is scheduled to declare the effort a qualified success at a meeting of the American Pediatric Society in San Diego.

Cynthia Cutshall's parents never expected that she would be able to go to school. Born with a rare genetic disorder called ADA deficiency, the Canton, Ohio, girl had no functioning immune system to protect her from infections. As a result, she suffered chronic sinus problems that often led to near-fatal pneumonia, and seemed destined to live a life of wretched isolation, much like an earlier, more well-known victim of the disease, David, the "boy in the bubble" in Houston, who died at age 12.