One patient, Ashanti DeSilva, exhibited a temporary response, whereas the response in the second patient was far less (Blaese et al., 1995). Its promise was illustrated in 1990 when a 4-year-old girl named Ashanti DeSilva became the world’s first successful gene-therapy patient. On September 14, 1990, researchers at the U.S. National Institutes of Health performed the first approved gene therapy procedure on four-year old Ashanti DeSilva, born with severe combined immune deficiency. Ashanti DeSilva started receiving PEG-ADA injections at the age of two, and initially she responded well. ASHANTI DESILVA-The first successful case of Gene Therapy occurred in the 1990s on a young girl named Ashanti DeSilva, a victim of the recessive metabolic disorder, ADA deficiency, which made her immune system weak and vulnerable to nearly every virus.She lacked ability to produce a key enzyme which would ultimately lead to her death at a young age. Gene therapy (also called human gene transfer) is a medical field which focuses on the utilization of the therapeutic delivery of nucleic acids into a patient's cells as a drug to treat disease. ARCHIVAL (NOVA, CHILDREN BY DESIGN, 2-9-93): ADULT: Ashanti, Ashanti, come baby. If she was to live, she'd need something more than PEG-ADA. • The first gene therapy was performed on September 14th, 1990 – Ashanti DeSilva was treated for SCID • Sever combined immunodeficiency – Doctors removed her white blood cells, inserted the missing gene into the WBC, and then put them back into her blood stream. NARRATION: Many of the questions, and the controversy, remind Ashanti DeSilva of her own experience with a different kind of genetic engineering, called gene therapy, nearly 30 years ago. But by the age of four, she was slipping away, no longer responding strongly to her injections. Her T-cell count rose sharply and she developed some resistance to disease.