100,000 Californians To Be Gene Sequenced 176
eldavojohn writes "A hundred thousand elderly Californians (average age 65) will be gene sequenced by the state using samples of their saliva. This will be the first time such a large group has had their genes sequenced, and it is hoped to be a goldmine for genetic maladies — from cardiovascular diseases to diabetes to even the diseases associated with aging. Kaiser Permanente patients will be involved, and they are aiming to have half a million samples ready by 2013. Let's hope that they got permission from the patients' doctors first."
Not sequencing (Score:5, Informative)
This not (gene or genome) sequencing. Rather, it picks up single nucleotide changes (SNPs). Still valuable information, but no new mutation will be discovered with this method.
Sequencing would be a couple of orders of magnitude more expensive.
Re:Damned sure glad... (Score:3, Informative)
Oh and if you go back further. Africans built great civilizations and had lots of math that the europeans stole from them. Some cities were very well educated. Timbuktu rivaling Alexandria in some respects.
Or further forwards, the inuit haven't fared nearly as well as america. Even though they are an offshoot of americans. I'm sure you made a mistake in your calculations somewhere.
s/Sequenced/Genotyped (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The Good, the Bad, the Ugly... (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.genome.gov/24519851 [genome.gov]
Re:Other countries (Score:3, Informative)
a) Listen harder
b) They only tell your parents about it and by the time you are old enough to care chances are your parents have forgotten.
Bad summary (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Damned sure glad... (Score:5, Informative)
This is why we passed GINA: http://www.genome.gov/24519851 [genome.gov]
NO NO NO... not gene sequenced (Score:3, Informative)
This is not the same as sequencing their genomes. This will not provide a full sequence of each person's genome. It will look for specific mutations that have already been identified and tell us who has certain point mutations.
Think of it as the difference between having the full text of the file in the case of sequencing and having a count of the number of times the writer wrote "teh" instead of "the"
This is not to say that this study is without merit but it is not gene sequencing or genomic sequencing.
For more information on SNP arrays wikipedia is helpful [wikipedia.org] and if you really want details you can talk to Affymetrix [affymetrix.com] (I bet these are the arrays they will use).
Re:Not sequencing (Score:5, Informative)
Anonymous coward is correct. This is genotyping, which is orders of magnitude less resource-intensive than gene sequencing.
Genotyping | sequencing || driving down the highway | Lewis and Clark's journey
Sequencing is pathfinding (they are not doing this). Genotyping is exploring the path that you already know is there (this is what they are doing). On the sequencing front, there is currently a 1000 genomes project - a massive collaboration of worldwide importance due to its difficulty and expense. On the other hand, genotyping 100,000 people is done all the time (heart attack GWAS, etc). The two concepts are enormously different.
Re:With or without permission? (Score:3, Informative)
It would be completely illegal without informed consent. They would have had to go to their Internal Review Board (IRB) and get approval and would be required to follow federal guidelines. This is a highly regulated part of medical privacy and IRBs do not screw around with the rules because the institutional consequences are massive. They range from massive lawsuits to federal crimes. The scientists doing the SNP arrays would also be forbidden from knowing any patient information. Only the doctors involved with patient treatment would know any identifying information.
Now one of the interesting caveats to this is that the doctors involved with the patient's care are privy to the results of the SNP array. Presumably they would be told "Patient X Y and Z have mutations correlated with early onset Alzheimers and Huntington's Disease. They would be obligated to tell their patients and begin any appropriate care. My guess is that is why they decided to study patients around 65 years old. Any genetic predispositions would already have manifest themselves. I am curious if it was done to avoid any ethical concerns with "diagnoses" arising from the study.
Re:Damned sure glad... (Score:3, Informative)
Citation?
In general, other than somewhat exaggerating the capabilities of non-European nations, you're correct - Europe wasn't the height of civilization back then. But don't undermine your own arguments by adding items of questionable veracity.
Also, note that even if China had been inclined to conquer Europe then, they'd have been unable to do so - the logistics situation would have been impossible.
Re:The Good, the Bad, the Ugly... (Score:3, Informative)
1. The 'like-risk individual' qualification -- I believe this to be an incorrect assumption on your part. There is no such thing as 'like-risk' -- the question is to what extent we can factor known risk factors into premiums.
2. Yet when you proposed adjusted premiums for ascertained variable risk, that contradicts your definition of the purpose of insurance.
3. Effectively, those who incur reimbursable expense are subsidized by those who don't. That's the nature of the system, and how it operates when operating as intended. Those who do not make claims subsidize (through their premiums) those who do make claims. Not sure how you could claim it operates any differently than this.
We have very different philosophical stances, and we'll never agree on those foundations. But I think if you want to split hairs on terminology, you need to be very careful.
Re:The Good, the Bad, the Ugly... (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately for the social Darwinists in the crowd, they DO have one last option available. That is, attack the society that told them to just kindly go away and die quietly somewhere and take what they need. It's not as if they would have anything to lose is it?
The same philosophy of social darwinism that tells you it's OK to just let them die also tells them it's OK to kill you so they and their family might live. The difference is that at some point they will face a 100% chance of death if they DON'T attack and a significant but lesser chance of death if they do.
Disenfranchise people en-mass long enough and soon enough they will form their own society. If the parent society interferes with that, they will eventually become an enemy.
Alternatively they become a diffuse source of discontent and the society unravels from the inside out.
Re:Damned sure glad... (Score:1, Informative)
I'm under the Kaiser plan and was asked for spit sample. The whole thing was voluntary. They give me an informed consent form with lots of details. I believe massive data mining of gene sequences from 1000s of people is necessary to get statistically valid data to find new drugs and cures. So I was happy to do it.
Re:Not sequencing (Score:2, Informative)
Parent is absolutely right. Just to illustrate the difference, here are some approximate costs for doing this in one patient:
Genotyping: $100
Sequencing 80% of coding genes: $10000
Sequencing entire genome: $60000