William French Anderson

William French Anderson, M.D. (b. 1936) is a U.S. physician, geneticist and molecular biologist. He is considered a pioneer of gene therapy. He graduated from Harvard College in 1958 and from Harvard Medical School in 1963. In 1990, he claimed to be the first person ever to succeed in gene therapy of a 4-year-old girl suffering from SCID (a form of an immuno-deficiency disorder called "bubble boy disease"). His claims were later found to have been exaggerated. In 2006, he became infamous as a convicted child molester.

Childhood
Anderson was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His father was an engineer and his mother was a journalist. According to his biography, he was a stutterer who eventually overcame his impediment and was recognized for his performance in track, theater, and debate. Anderson was a 1954 graduate of Tulsa Central High School.

Career
Dr. Anderson was formerly employed by University of Southern California and spent 27 years as a gene therapy researcher at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He was also the founding editor of the peer-reviewed journal Human Gene Therapy. He was also a professor in the graduate program at NIH. He was called the "Father of Gene Therapy" for his promising but controversial experimental medical treatments injecting healthy genes into sick patients.

Sexual abuse conviction
Anderson was arrested on July 30, 2004, on allegations of sexual abuse of a minor. He was convicted and immediately jailed on July 192006 of three counts of lewd acts upon a child under the age of 14 for the years 1997 through 2001 and one count of continuous sexual abuse. On February 2, 2007, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison and ordered to pay $68,000 in restitution, fines, and fees ; he had faced a maximum of 18 years for molesting the now 19-year-old girl, the daughter of his colleague, in his home when she was 10 to 15 years old. Jurors were shown e-mails and played tape-recorded conversations where the girl angrily confronted Anderson, who said, "I just did it, just something in me was just evil."

In February, 2005 Anderson was also charged in Montgomery County, Maryland with molesting a Silver Spring, Maryland boy for three years in the 1980s. Prosecutors dropped those charges, citing the statute of limitations of Maryland law.

Trivia

 * Was runner-up for Time magazine's 1995 Man of the Year