Prognosis
Sickle Cell Patients Face a Tough Choice: Be Cured or Have Kids
A Biden administration plan would require drugmakers to pay for fertility treatments.
A researcher performs a Crispr procedure, a gene-altering process that’s part of one treatment for sickle cell disease.
Photographer: Gregor Fischer/picture alliance/Getty Images
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When Celenise Mahmood first learned about two new gene therapies that could cure sickle cell disease, she felt a wave of relief.
Her 9-year-old son, Navid, has the inherited blood disorder. By age 5, he’d had over 30 life-saving blood transfusions. He has also lost hearing in his left ear. Though he’s too young to get the treatments now — eligible patients must be 12 or older — Celenise began to imagine a brighter future for him.