ABSTRACT
A number of reviews and histories of gene therapy have been published. The earliest references that specifically address a scientific approach to carry out human gene therapy are in 1966; the original thinkers were Edward Tatum and Joshua Lederberg. The desired new gene will be introduced, by directed mutation, from normal cells of another donor by transduction, or by direct DNA transfer. In the September-October 1966 issue of The American Naturalist, Lederberg addresses the concept of engineering human cells in an article entitled “Experimental Genetics and Human Evolution”: The cultural revolution has begun its most critical impact on human evolution, having generated technical power which now feeds back to biological nature. The last decade of molecular biology has given people a mechanistic understanding of heredity, and an entry to the same for development. In 1968, French Anderson wrote an article for New England Journal of Medicine in which he postulated how gene therapy could one day be accomplished.
