Gene therapy trials for sickle cell disease halted after two patients develop cancer

[GoodTaste]

It seems to me that "after two patients developed" is more accurate than "after two patients develop" because of the time is "after" - using present time behind "after" sounds odd to me. But I can't explain it with more clarity.


Is "developed" better than "develop" here?

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Gene therapy trials for sickle cell disease halted after two patients develop cancer

Source: Science
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...ease-halted-after-two-patients-develop-cancer

 

[GoesStation]

No. "Developed" would be wrong.

 

[GoodTaste]

Why? How about "developing"?

The title of this thread is the title of the Science news article.

In its context, it says :"A company has stopped its clinical studies of a promising gene therapy for the blood disorder sickle cell disease after two people who participated developed leukemia-like cancer. " That is, a "after...developed..." structure. One may shorten it to make it headline, then we have "after two patients developed" rather than "after two patients develop" in the title.

 

[tedmc]

No. "Developed" would be wrong.

Why? It is about a past incident, isn't it? Why would you use the present tense?

 

[Rover_KE]

We're constantly having to explain that it's customary for verbs in titles and headlines to be put in the present tense.

In this title, 'are' is omitted before 'halted'. That's another convention.

 

[jutfrank]

Using developed would be grammatical but inappropriate. Using developing would be ungrammatical.

As Rover says, the present tense is used because this is a news headline.