Review: The Forever Fix: Gene Therapy and the Boy Who Saved It

The Forever Fix: Gene Therapy and the Boy Who Saved It by Ricki Lewis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

*Please note I won this via Goodreads Giveaways.*

Melissa's Musings

This book is really well written. Being that it deals with gene therapy, it has a lot of scientific background in it. I've taken biology a few times. Once in high school, once when getting my BA, and once when going back to school to get an associate's degree to be able to do a work exchange program. I took it so many times not because I didn't get it, but because it is easiest science to digest, IMO. So. I learned multiple times over about brain body connections, proteins, DNA, axons, neurons, etc. All of which helped me in reading this book.

Although, I will say, that this is written in such a way that even if you don't have much scientific background, it's still easy enough to understand.

I honestly thought this would be more of a third party memoir, about Corey, the boy who's treatment "saved" gene therapy. But it doesn't focus on him nearly as much as I thought it would. Instead it's more of a combination of short chapters on a variety of people and the disorders they live with, and some of them, ultimately die from.

As easy as this was to read, I do have to admit that I was less invested in Corey's story by the end. I skimmed over the last few pages of the book. He still had a way to go in his treatment from the sound of things, since they only did the gene therapy on one eye, so it would be interesting to find out where he is at in that process these days.

Even though this was less memoir and more scientific than I was hoping, it's still a great read.

Have you ever researched gene therapy, or read any books on it?