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Genetic Information on Major Diseases Uncovered
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Jun 08, 2007 02:03 PM
from the oh-genes-not-jeans dept.
from the oh-genes-not-jeans dept.
gollum123 writes "A major advance in the genetic understanding behind several of the world's most common diseases is being reported by the BBC. A study tested some 17,000 people to find genetic markers for the various diseases. 'They found new genetic variants for depression, Crohn's disease, coronary heart disease, hypertension, rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 and 2 diabetes. The Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium (WTCCC) involved 50 leading research groups analyzing the DNA from 2,000 patients for each of the seven conditions and 3,000 healthy volunteers. One of the most exciting finds was a previously unknown gene common to type 1 diabetes and Crohn's disease, a type of inflammatory bowel disorder, suggesting that they share similar biological pathways.' There is also disease by disease data at the BBC."
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Spoiler alert! (Score:5, Funny)
61 attcccctcc attgggaccg gagaaaccag gggagccccc cgggcagccg cgcgcccctt
121 cccacggggc cctttactgc gccgcgcgcc cggcccccac ccctcgcagc accccgcgcc
181 ccgcgccctc ccagccgggt ccagAcggag ccatggggcc ggagccgcag tgagcaccat
241 ggagctggcg gccttgtgcc gctgggggct cctcctcgcc ctcttgcccc ccggagccgc
301 gagcacccaa gtgtgcaccg gcacagacat gaagctgcgg ctccctgcca gtcccgagac
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Uh-oh! (Score:2)
I think that part was swapped
Not good, not good at all (Score:3, Funny)
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Much as some wish to blame their peccadilloes on the hardware, Paris Hilton had to work at being vacuous.
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Humanity be careful what you do with this.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Information, knowledge good! what we do with it, usually not so good.
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I would argue that most level-headed people would not be interfering with the private affairs of others, especially when what those others do does not affect them.
Re:Humanity be careful what you do with this.. (Score:4, Insightful)
So....why? Doesn't the freedom to choose whether or not to end a pregnancy include the freedom to choose to end it for any reason or no reason at all? If it's wrong to terminate for these reasons, what makes it okay to terminate for other reasons, or no reason at all?
Posting anonymously because I just want you to think about this. I don't want to deal with a flood of flames.
Parent
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Link Please (Score:2)
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http://washingtontimes.com/technology/20070518-10 0 822-2536r.htm [washingtontimes.com]
Here is the link
" The man to whom the license was granted, professor Gedis Grudzinskas, was asked whether he would screen babies for hair color. He replied that hair color "can be a cause of bullying, which can lead to suicide. With the agreement of the HFEA, I would do it.""
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Just because a community of people are incapable of handling minor differences in appearance, justifies denying others the right to life?
Good news, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Definition of discrimination? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it to our long-term interests to force insurers to operate in ignorance?
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Re:Definition of discrimination? (Score:4, Insightful)
The purpose of insurance is to mitigate unknown, future risk. Anything that can be used to reduce the present uncertainty in the risk is a perfectly reasonably factor in determining premiums. Insurance is a way of trading future risk for present cost within a given risk-class equivilency group. It works best when the risk classes are finely divided; in other words, when the premiums paid reflect the best known estimate of the individual insuree's risk.
If you were to force the insurance agency to charge a single premium, ignoring individual risk factors, then those who know they have less risk will find the premiums excessive and choose not to participate. As a result the premiums would have to be increased, and yet more marginal customers would leave. In the end you'd be left with just the highest-risk customer(s) paying a premium appropriate to their level of risk. All "non-discriminatory" insurance really does is make it impossible to get low-risk insurance.
As for the specific problem of being born with an expensive genetic issue, I think there is a way to leverage insurance here as well: the parents can take out an insurance policy on the child prior to conception, based on their own genetic risk factors.
Parent
Re:Definition of discrimination? (Score:5, Insightful)
the average person is paying about average healthcare. you're probably paying close to average. if you believed you were low risk, would you opt-out? i wouldnt.
Parent
How insurance companies earn money (Score:3, Informative)
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However, the problem with the speeding ticket example is that you made the choice to speed and were then caught on it. People don't get to choose their genes (at least not yet!), and this information is more or less set before birth.
This may also be another argument that free-market health insurance is flawed, since the profit motive to charge more for the genetically at risk
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in any group you will have poller opisits and average people.
you will have people that are never sick that never need help - but they pay the payment
you will have the people that are average in the bell curve and their payemnt covers their use
you will have people who are extreamly sick all the time and need all the help they can get - they are paid for by the rest
it makes sence - i mean for 24 years of my life was one
Short term: Nasty; Long term: Really good (Score:2)
Longer term (where "long" == years until we find an affordable, widely applicable way to delete these markers from an individual's genetic heritage) this is a really good thing.
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After all, just to cite one example, the gene responsible for sickle cell anemia also confers significant resistance to malaria to its carrier.
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Welcomed News (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine a world full of healthy people. The cost of healthcare would reduce greatly, thus allowing us to spend more on education and furthering the advancement of the human race.
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So, who's better about genetic selection? The actual environment, or some person (or worse yet, committee?)
Who will have access to this information? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who will have access to this information?
Some people fear that this information will be used to discriminate against disease-prone individuals in vivo...but it's far more likely that the first discrimination will happen long after birth.
Now everyone has a pre-existing condition (Score:5, Insightful)
The good news is, you'll have knowledge that could extend your life or even save it, if you could get treatment.
The bad news is, in countries with profit-based free-market medical insurance, you won't be to afford that get that treatment, because insurance companies will jack up their premiums when they find out about you.
Everyone has seen this coming for decades. Now it's here. I don't think the United States is ready for it.
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What do you mean we aren't ready for it? Today we have no cure for diabetes. If they invent the cure tomorrow, and insurance companies won't pay for it... no one is any worse off. Everyone complains about health care costs rising. Well, you know what? In the 50's when health care was apparently affordable, my Grandfather would have died of the stroke that he had before they gave him the blood thinner that saved his life and the stent in his caro
Re:Now everyone has a pre-existing condition (Score:4, Interesting)
Nobody needs premium food, cars, clothes, or entertainment. If you can afford it, enjoy it, but you can certainly live your life without it.
In my opinion, everyone should have access to the best health care possible, however: this is not only in the best interests of the individual, but in the best interests of society, where a healthy population is more productive, happy, and indicative of the success of your country. Why should the rich have better medical benefits granted unto them? Is a CEO of a major corporation who rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year more important than a researcher who is paid much, much less but makes important contributions to medicine, and thus entitled to a prompter, higher quality of treatment?
The US attitude that you should be able to buy better medical care baffles my mind. Then again, I'm a Canadian, so I was raised with an entirely different mentality. Furthermore, I have Crohn's Disease and am currently seriously ill (I have been for a few months as my doctors try to figure out a treatment that functions for me). With constant fevers of 101 F+ and crippling pain, I am for now unable to work: fortunately, I don't have the added stress of medical bills or even the worry that I could be completely denied treatment because of no group insurance coverage. There is no insurance company that would willingly agree to take me on as a client as my medications cost about $400 / month, and some Crohn's patients run up around $100k / year for a disease whose cause is largely unknown and is thus completely out of our control.
Parent
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Let's take an extreme example. Say you have a 100% brain dead 18 year old. We could spend over 1 million a year to keep them alive for the next 70 years or not. Now if the family want's to spend their money to do so that's one thing but why should society? What about hypochondriacs? I don't mind paying for addiction counse
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Given the % difference between us and Apes.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Cool...but we already have prevention methods.. (Score:2)
I understand that's not always the case and that in some cases hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease cannot be prevented, but I think for the majority, humani
Replication of Results? (Score:4, Informative)
Since there are tens of thousands of genes in the genome, a study with 17,000 subjects makes for less than one subject per gene. (Exactly how many "genes" are in the genome anyway? What exactly defines a "gene"? That is another vast topic.)
Statistically speaking, there should be at least ten subjects per covariate (gene) tested. There is a great deal of hoo-haa over microarrays, but the more you learn about microarrays, the more you will learn just how unreliable they are. The same "disease" can have vastly different pathophysiologies and genetic origins across population groups. Epigenetics, penetrance, expressivity, intron effects -- all multiply the complexity exponentially.
In short, genetics is to biology what nuclear fusion is to physics -- a promising technology that will remain a "few years away" for decades to come.
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Statistically speaking, you don't need 10 subjects per covariate. Where did you pull that number from? Let's say we have 100 subjects (50 cases, 50 controls), and 100 tests that we're performing. Let's say one of those tests segregates perfectly with our subjects. Bam! Huge result statistically. The probability of that result is astonishingly small (p ~ 10^-30). That means unless we are performing close to 10^30 tests, we can believe th
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Typically termed Genetic Newborn Screening, a newborn is tested against a number of diseases before being discharged from the hospital.
See the following for some information:
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/teachers/units/newb orn/NGS-student%20packet.pdf [utah.edu]
So your comment that genetics is just a promising technology for years to come is, at least somewhat wrong. It's here already,
Hmm.. I need more info. I'm type 2 and not fat. (Score:2)
Heck I ride a bike down the Bristol bike path, play soccer and softball too. I always thought there has to be a genetic defect
that caused my insulin resistnace. Now.. I hope to find what the genetic code that is defective does. This way maybe I can treat
the source of the problem rather than taking a DDP-4 inhibitor (I looked it up, the drug inhibits an enzyme that's not only im
UnNatural Selection (Score:2)
If the results from this article are correct, then people who have these genetic defects may be able to "turn off" the genes. (Maybe I'm reading that into the article). If this is the case, then my above worries are groundless, and my faith in modern medicine has gained some ground.
So what is the downside? (Score:4, Insightful)
And on that note, someone mentioned that this may well lead us to our next step in evolution -- that may well be true, but shouldn't evolution happen in response to natural factors by nature's invisible hand? Not some doc in a lab? I mean, so many people on Slashdot are keen on letting the "ivisible hand of capitalism" work the market, why shouldn't we let nature decide what is best for us?
I believe this sort of thing was covered with the Asgaard in Stargate SG-1, they died out because they genetically modified their bodies past a certain point where they could no longer reproduce, only extend their own lives. Now, I am not saying there is any scientific basis for something liek that happening, but aren't parables supposed to make you at least think before acting?
As a diabetic... (Score:3, Funny)
As a type 1 diabetic, I've always said that diabetes is a pain in the ass. Now, since this research shows that it shares a common gene with Crohn's disease, I guess that my statement is even more true than ever.
Interesting reading the comments here (Score:3, Insightful)
Will someone PLEASE explain to me how the ability to diagnose diseases better and earlier is a BAD thing?
There are numerous eggs and numerous sperm to make numerous children by any couple.
When one of each gets a chance at life, a lot of others don't. One lives, others die. If we leverage genetics and choose zygote X where naturally Y would have gotten, it's a zero-sum morals game. A different one lives. As they're not yet anywhere near development, putting morals on this is akin to calling masturbation genocide. LOTS of potential human beings never get to live. It's the natural order of things. Forcing morals onto this and blaming people for it is nothing short of lunacy.
The other side of the coin is, of course, that a LOT of life-ruining conditions (not only for the affected individual, but quite often for his entire family) are simply side-stepped.
Discarding 41st-week pregnancies due to a disliked color of hair is easily avoidable using legal regulation where otherwise sane laws don't exist (say, laws allowing the mother the first part of her pregnancy to decide whether she is ready to commit and allowing her to abort, yet disallowing non-medically-motivated abortion once a certain reasonable point in the pregnancy is crossed, much like you can't just kill your 3-year-old because you don't want to commit to growing him).
Yet how do these mild, pathetic and trivial-to-overcome "dangers" reason to bash the enabling technology that would save so much grief?
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If you disagree with the arguments posed, by all means dispute them. But don't just dismiss them out of hand, with a snarky "tinfoil hat" comment.
But is there a paranoid trend? (Score:2)
Asking GP to answer all the posts begs the issue. GP is talking about a trend. It is one thing to tell someone on five different occasions that he really has had too much to drink. It is a completely different thing to confront him and tell him that he is an alcoholic
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