Soda battles

infancy and causes severe vision loss, especially at night. An estimated 2,000 Americans have the form of the disease they targeted, Bennett said. But other reports were not satisfied with a mere 2,000 potential beneficiaries. New hope is offered to “millions affected by eye diseases” said the Independent. This was “hundreds of thousands” in the Los Angeles Times. But the LA Times also highlighted the chequered history of gene therapy. It has been a “snakebitten field”, it reported. Gene therapy has been studied in humans for over 15 years with limited success. The field suffered a setback in 1999 with the death of Jesse Geslinger, aged 18, in an experiment for a liver disorder. And some children treated for an immune disorder later developed leukaemia, many papers reported. However, the early results of the eye experiments should give the field a boost, many reporters said. For the experiment, the scientists injected copies of a working gene beneath the retina. Only one eye was treated in each patient — the worst one — in case anything went wrong; the untreated eye was used for comparison. After the treatment, the patient’s eyesight and light sensitivity were measured periodically; mobility was tested in a maze or an obstacle course. All three of those treated in Philadelphia “reported improved vision in the injected eyes,” said the LA Times. The vector used to get the genes into the cells was developed by Katherine High, in Philadelphia for that team’s trial, whereas the British team used a vector created by Targeted Genetics Corp of Seattle. No surprise then, that Washington States’ Seattle Times flagged up the local interest. “The research, some of which involves Seattle biotech Targeted Genetics, marks a major milestone for gene therapy.” In the British group, the treatment only worked in Steven Howarth, aged 18, whose disease was less advanced than the other two. So perhaps the strongest British story ran in the Manchester Evening News. Howarth lives in Bolton, just outside Manchester. “A Bolton teenager has benefited from breakthrough gene therapy,” the newspaper trumpeted, bringing both the science and local interest angles to the fore. East Africa’s iconic lesser flamingo is widely distributed around the Rift Valley lakes, but it breeds almost exclusively at only one site: Lake Natron in Tanzania. So conservationists are bothered about plans to develop a plant to extract soda ash from the lake which threatens to disturb the breeding birds at this most remote site. Lake Natron Resources Limited, a company jointly owned by the government of Tanzania and TATA Chemicals of Mumbai, India, proposes to develop a facility at Lake Natron to extract and process soda ash. To nest successfully, lesser flamingos require very specific conditions. Lake Natron, but no other site, provides these. “The proposed plant poses major risks to the lesser flamingos from disturbance, including increased populations of nest predators, and changes to the water balance and chemistry of the lake,” says Chris Magin, of the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), one of the organisations spearheading the case against the new plant. Soda ash mining also threatens the tourism industry throughout East Africa and the livelihoods of the local people who depend on the lake basin. Conservationists are fighting to protect the key breeding site of East Africa’s iconic lesser flamingos. Nigel Williams reports. Soda battles