00:00A child with hereditary deafness regained their hearing thanks to a successful gene therapy
00:05surgery. 11-year-old Isam Dam became the first person to get gene therapy in the United States
00:11for congenital deafness, according to the New York Times. Dam flew from Spain to be part of
00:16the clinical trial at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and doctors say on October 4,
00:212023, the treatment was a success. Dam said in an interview, quote,
00:26There's no sound I don't like. The attending surgeon at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
00:31had this to say. The idea here is to replace a defective gene that a child is born with,
00:40and there are estimated to be over 150 genes that cause hearing loss at birth, and this is just the
00:48first one that we've been able to treat. Experts hope that the success of the clinical trial will
00:53lead to similar breakthroughs in the future for the other genetic mutations that cause hearing loss.
