in Sonia. The benefit of knowing that Sonia carries the same gene as her mother and finding out
early is that the symptoms won’t appear till her 50’s and they could develop new strategies about
fixing genes. Sonia and Eric gave up a lot to research this disease. They both upended their
careers and started a full-time job in science. First, they both got jobs at a lavatory as the night
shift, then were accepted into Harvard PHD school, and learned as much as they could about the
Anna Palmer
BIOS 10:30-11:20
Video #3
disease. There problem now is it is hard to get a drug into the brain without something going
wrong. They have made remarkable progress which is making it more possible.
Molly Troxel has a nickname of “The Light Hog” because she would find lights when she
was younger. The doctor’s diagnosis Molly’s condition was genetical inherited blindness and it
was uncurable. Dr. Edwin stone explained that the mutated gene was passed down from parent to
offspring to cause the disease. It carries 10-20 genes that could cause a bad gene when the
parent’s mate. She got both a faulty copy from her parents. Her photoresistors are not able to be
reset leaving her to lose her vision. Ophthalmologist Jean Bennett and her husband, eye surgeon
Albert Maguire, have treated and adopted dogs with the canine version of Molly’s disease. It
made them one step closer in understanding gene therapy by manipulating the genes. They used
a virus to deliver the good gene to replace the malfunctioning gene. Doctors are now “hijacking
the hijacker” in order to correct the mutations. This means the hijack the virus to put in a correct
form of the gene to put in place of the bad gene. After two weeks of injecting the dogs they can
