Will I Have to Mortgage My House? Reflections on Gene Therapy, Innovation, and Inequality in the USA

Series Convenors: Dr Alex Aylward, Professor Erica Charters, Professor Mark Harrison, Dr Catherine M Jackson, Dr Sloan Mahone

CAR T-Cell from the National Institute for Health and Care Research

Seminars in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology

Dr Eben Kirksey (Oxford)

Will I Have to Mortgage My House? Reflections on Gene Therapy, Innovation, and Inequality in the USA

The first FDA-approved gene therapy, Kymriah, was released to the public in August 2017 with a $475,000 price tag. With the emergence of personalized genetic medicine, we are entering a new era of profound inequality. This talk explores the stories of children and parents who signed up for the Kymriah clinical trial before it was approved--risking their lives and household finances in pursuit of a cancer cure. Issues of race and class played out at Penn Medicine, as researchers explored new horizons of hope with living cellular therapies.