French Anderson was sentenced today (Feb 2) to 14 years in prison, after he was
found guilty last summer of four counts of molestation. His victim, now 19 years old, is the daughter of his colleague, and the abuse started when she was 10 years old.
Soon after the conviction, the University of Southern California (USC) released a statement that it had suspended Anderson and was initiating dismissal proceedings to remove his tenure and faculty position, calling his actions a "grave offense" to the USC community.
Anderson
claimed to have led the first team to carry out an approved human gene therapy clinical protocol, in September 1990. During the treatment, Anderson and his colleagues used a retrovirus to insert genes into the T lymphocytes of a 4-year-old girl suffering from severe combined immunodeficiency, or SCID, caused by a deficiency in the adenosine deaminase gene.
Anderson had focused his recent research on gene therapy delivery systems. Before joining the University of Southern California, Anderson spent 27 years as a gene therapy researcher at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health.
To date, Anderson has published almost 400 research articles and been profiled by a number of publications, including the New York Times and Scientific American.
See The Scientist daily news on Monday for more coverage.