Ethical issues in and beyond prospective clinical trials of human gene therapy.

As the potential for the first human trials of somatic cell gene therapy nears, two ethical issues are examined: problems of moral choice for members of institutional review boards who consider the first protocols, for parents, and for the clinical researchers, and the special protections that may be required for the infants and children to be involved, and ethical objections to somatic cell therapy made by those concerned about a putative inevitable progression of genetic knowledge from therapy to mass genetic engineering in human reproduction. The author's viewpoint is that a consensus exists on the required moral approach to somatic cell therapy, but that no moral approach yet exists for experiments beyond this level, especially in the germline cells of human beings.