Gene therapy — for so long something that belonged to the future — has just hit the streets.

A couple of weeks back, you might have picked up a headline alerting us to the most expensive drug in history — a one-off gene therapy cure for spinal muscular atrophy. Novartis have priced the drug Zolgensma at $A3 million.

Traditionally a parent of a baby with spinal muscular atrophy was told: take your baby home and love her or him. Have no false hope, the baby will die paralysed and unable to eat or talk by the age of two.

What’s the narrative going to be now? There is a cure but it costs $3 million.