Free Republic

China, with lower regulatory hurdles, is racing to a lead in gene therapy. Once a week, Hashmukh Patel, a 62-year-old retired semiconductor engineer from Silicon Valley, travels with his wife, Bena, from their Beijing hotel to Beijing-Haidian Hospital. They ride the crowded elevator to the ninth floor, enter a pleasant, sun-filled ward with private rooms, and Patel gets an injection that he hopes will save his life. Suffering from late-stage cancer of the esophagus, he has come to Beijing for a Chinese gene-therapy drug called Gendicine that's supposed to kill tumor cells. Patel tried just about everything before coming to...

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's health problems were more serious than doctors let on after he suffered a minor stroke in December, including a large aneurysm in the septum between the chambers of his heart, the Haaretz newspaper reported Tuesday. Sharon, comatose since suffering a massive second stroke on Jan. 4, also suffered from a shunt that causes blood to flow in the wrong direction through a tiny hole in the septum that he was born with, the newspaper said. The aneurysm is a known source of cerebral blood clots, the newspaper said. The prime minister also had other conditions in...