> This seems like another 'solution' that really only addresses how the diseases manifest but not the root cause.
If you read the article, you'd see that one of the features is that in the vast majority of cases, the B-cells return, but not the B-cells that were causing the immunodeficiency
quote: "Once injected into the hosts, the CAR T cells got to work. They multiplied and targeted and destroyed all the B cells — including pathogenic cells linked to the autoimmune conditions. The bioengineered T cells survived for weeks in the recipients before largely vanishing. Eventually, new healthy B cells returned, but no pathogenic ones did. A similar response has been observed in people with autoimmune conditions who received CAR T cells derived from their own cells."
My point being that the immune system appears to remains functional with this treatment, differentiating it from the clinical therapies that are available to you currently.
Speaking as someone who has also been let down by the medical system, but also who wouldn't be alive without it: I agree that Big Pharma is a problem (anyone disagreeing with that is arguing against the scientific evidence -- Ben Goldacre's book Bad Pharma is a good introduction to the problems with the industry), and that in the gross case they are lacking financial incentives. At the same time, this does not mean that the clinical therapies we have or are developing, are utterly ineffective.