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World's Largest Medical Experiment
eldavojohn writes "Recently in the UK, a Biobank project has been rolled out to 'unpick' the genetic basis of diseases such as cancer on half a million volunteers. This is based on the success of a three-month pilot phase conducted on 3,800 participants. From the article: 'Over the next four years, blood and urine samples will be collected from volunteers aged 40 to 69, to help scientists unravel the genetic foundations of common diseases, including cancer, heart disease, diabetes, dementia and joint problems. If you live in the UK, agreeing to this survey may involve a little more than you would expect."
Is a couple of scantilly clad nurses. Then they can collect DNA too.
It is called the HIV virus. AIDS can result from being infected with the HIV virus. And I don't think the military invented it. It's been recently shown to have definitely come from monkeys, probably in the 1930's.
Theres a project like this in Iceland called DeCODE. They've been given a lot of power over the data collected, enough to make some people wary. It's a fair assumption that this project will face similar problems, although the measures governing DeCODE seem to protect the company much more than the individual. It will be interesting to see how Biobank handles this.
It's called the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) virus?
Lemme make sure the department of redundancy department knows this...
"AIDS can result from being infected with the HIV virus. And I don't think the military invented it. It's been recently shown to have definitely come from monkeys, probably in the 1930's."
Both are true: the military invented it and it came from monkeys. One on the same.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Smoking i hardly a good way to control population, by the time smokers die they most likely already have children.
If...
they properly inform people about the program and its uses before having them volunteer.
they are rigorous in protecting privacy. (No AOL fiasco.)
they closely monitor different companies are doing with the data - no cross-referencing with their own data to identify people, no reselling of the data, etc.
they allow patients to "opt-out" even after they have volunteered.
they provide it for free to interested, responsible paries. (Or at least cheap enough that major pharmaceutical companies aren't the only customers.)
they follow the ethical standards of the profession, and not the ethical standards of the mighty dollar (or pound).
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
World of Warcraft on the other hand is pure genius!
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
"they properly inform people about the program and its uses before having them volunteer."
/urine samples, always decide to give first and ask questions later.
Only for a problem that, when confronted by someone demanding blood / semen
Where were you when the voynix came?
Here's the link: Biobank (UK) http://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/
The problem with this is that all the volunteers won't see a penny, but the medical institutions that come up with a medical breakthrough as a result of the data obtained from the volunteers will make billions. They will patent the cure, market it and the volunteers get nothing.
In the best sense, surely any profitable outcome that arises out of data provided by these volunteers should be subject to some sort of profit sharing? Afterall, without the volunteers, it may not be possible for these pharmaceutical companies to develop the medicine.
(Not to mention the fact that the volunteers may find out stuff they'd rather not know.)
What about all the fluoride in the water? It's a conspiracy... a secret experiment that's been conducted for a generation. Who knows what effects that has on us? It might be turning us all into communist spies. Perhaps we'll all wake up one day under the influence of a massive KGB mind control beam. Anything could happen! We must protect our precious bodily fluids at all costs!
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
...was the introduction of the Big Mac.
...a species that historically procreates before 30 years of age is kept alive until their 80s by improved hygiene and medicine. Your body was never designed to last as long as it usually does nowadays, and the systems break down. Cancer isn't a "manmade virus;" it's the end result of a lifetime's worth of minor genetic insults.
We need people to die..
Fine. You first.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Curse you for bringing by association that damnable "In the Navy" earworm.
Where were you when the voynix came?
What are you smoking? Over population hasn't been a problem for years now. The new bogeyman is overconsumption; aka, SUVs, $3 gas, plastic+paper packaging, disposable diapers, etc.
Don't believe me? Look at the CIA factbook for Japan, US, and China:
Japan's birthrate is lower than it's deathrate. It's fertility rate is only 1.4.
China's birthrate is higher than it's deathrate for now, but it has a below 2.1 fertility rate. That means they too will have a smaller population in the future.
The US also has a below 2.1 fertility rate (at 2.09), so it too will be seeing population decline were it not for immigrants.
See Overpopulation.com for more about the fertility rate and population growth.
GPL Deconstructed
"We need people to die..."
I guess it beats that "Army of One" slogan.
Where were you when the voynix came?
...blood and urine samples will be collected from volunteers...
Just go down to any chav-infested town centre on a Friday or Saturday night. Plenty of blood and urine around then...
The longer we spend trying to find what is wrong with US, as opposed to what is wrong with the crap we eat, drink and breathe is the biggest killer of all. Somehow though, doctors are oblivious to the fact that the only animals that get cancer, heart disease, diabetes etc are us, and our domesticated pets (and livestock, etc). And so they don't find it unusual that the most sucessful primate in the world has more built-in flaws than a pre-alpha build of Windows. Hang on a second!!! Doesn't evolution select the MOST fit?
And it's worth bearing in mind that iatrogenic deaths (from misdiagnosis, drug side effects, etc) rival those of heart disease and cancer anyway. So even assuming that current lifestyle advice from doctors is NOT the cause of the health crisis we are in, what do we do? If this research highlights the genetic "faults" inherent in all of us, the pharmaceuticals will be in a race to create drugs or gene therapy to mask these alleged flaws. Again - hang on a second!!! If you get rats in your house, do you release rattlesnakes to eat them?
I once heard that increased cancer screening could actually increase deaths due to unnecessary surgery, or other treatments, on benign tumours. I used to think that was crazy. But just consider what could happen if you can walk into a doctor's surgery, put drop of blood on a probe and be told that you should consider a preventative [insert favourite body part here]-ectomy to remove the ticking timebomb inside you.
"a species that historically procreates before 30 years of age is kept alive until their 80s by improved hygiene and medicine"
Things just really haven't been right since Logan 5 came along and destroyed Carrousel and the renewal process. They should have known better than to design a computer that destroys a city if you give it a confusing sentence.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Of course, if you live anywhere other than the UK, you'll find it involves far more than you'd expect.
I call it the "high-five". Kinda takes the string out, dontcha think?
The UK government has made no small secret that it thinks having the DNA of every person on file to run through each time they stop your car/arrest you to fish for other crimes would be a jolly swell idea.
Umm, No that is completely and totally incorrect. However "We and our Pets" are the only ones DIAGNOSED and TREATED for any of these conditions. The wild animals that suffer from these problems all DIE and are EATEN by predators or scavengers.
Why is it that some people will believe the MOST RIDICULOUS things without doing a single bit of research on their own or even applying any CRITICAL LOGIC ???
It's obvious that evolution is no longer selecting for additional intelligence! Or perhaps it's just the safety nannies preventing evolution...
more should be done to use the web to collect trial information. It costs 1/10th of a traditional trial; eventually the possibilty exists to create a new wellness mgmt system as we are doing on the brain, strictly voluntary, but providing tools allowing people to follow themselves over time - does it work? a few thousand people since 8/18 on this one. with a clear opt-out.
Volunteers in medical studies often (nearly ALWAYS) recieve medical advice and consultation, possibly free medication, and follow-through care. It sounds like you do not want to volunteer -- please don't. Some people, however, feel that participating in a worthy endeavor is payment enough. If it leads to improved health care, great. If you are concerned about pharma companies making money, go into politics. These issues do not belong in science.
Posting this anonymously 'cos of mod points.w here_are_the_privacy_and_security_safeguards.html
This is the UK. The Government doesn't do privacy, at least when it comes to the citizens. They want the police to have an eternal DNA database on everyone in the country. This will almost certainly be part of it.
See the following page for more concerns.
http://www.spy.org.uk/spyblog/2006/08/uk_biobank_
-- 1984 was meant as a warning, not a howto.
But what happens when someone with Dementia forgets to give their blood or urine sample?
Yeah but the headline is redundant because it is all UK volunteers. How many times does the /.'s stupid article comment backfire out of stupidity?
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Ah, the "frankenfood" arguement. The idea that genetic manipulation of foodcrops can create foods that will turn us all into gibbering zombies.
Apparantly, the parent poster doesn't realize that we've been doing this since time immemorial, through a process called "selective breeding". Different DNA in the corn doesn't make a difference once its in your system, all of it will still be broken down for individual sugars and proteins, etc. The DNA won't suddenly become hostile and start mutating you. Its still just corn. Genetically modified? Certainly. Just like any corn you could buy from anywhere, but this modification was done in a lab instead of through several generations of selective breeding. Also, its great with butter and salt!
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
If people stop consuming they will go back to fucking.....
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"Mind you, many people that respond to the ads for medical research studies aren't the most educated folks, or even care about what we do with the sample as long as they get the 15 bucks, But we try our best to inform them"
Just place a classified advert in Craiglist or the Cleveland Picayune or some other paper, saying "WANTED: FINGERS. WE REMOVE. YOU PAY $16"....and don't be surprised if you get a few customers.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Just a pity that they don't follow the subjects for a longer period of time. Although one can certainly learn a lot by tracking people for 4 years, I wonder if it is long enough for certain diseases which are, sadly enough, far too common.
As a comparison:
Full Story
Interesting projects in general though, precisely because of their scope.
Bah! I;ve been eeating it forrrr yeres and thyurs nething worong weth my cogggggggnitive skilz. l;akeurpewuj!
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
There is a difference between "selective breeding" that uses genetic strains already present in corn, and adding genes that are completely foreign to the organism. Selective breeding is aided by humans, but, at its most basic level, it does not override the selection mechanism in its most pristine form.
Also, on what do you base your claim that "Different DNA in the corn doesn't make a difference once it's in your system"? Last time I checked the only evidence we had was macroscopic: don't get sick when you eat it, and it must be fine. If health were just a simple matter of everything being "broken down for individual sugars and proteins" -- if that were all that mattered when food entered the body, and all the other waste, etc. components didn't matter -- then why does it matter what we eat at all?
It is easy to dismiss the argument against GM food by waving your hand and classifying all critics as over-imaginative, zombie-fearing loonies. I guess it's a convenient way of avoiding having to think too critically about the argument in order to form an enlightened and fair opinion.
Don't forget the unintentional "experiments" that tested things like:
Will the thinning of the ozone layer result in more cancer?
Will increased pollution cause health problems?
Will increasing the average air temperature over time have health consequences?
Will advertising cigarettes on television lead to more lung cancer?
Will not promoting condoms lead to an increase in HIV transmission?
and many more.
Yes, I know, technically those aren't "medical experiments" but we still have an opportunity to learn from them.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
That's only a small part of the experiment. There are varying amounts of unpronounceable ingredients in lots of other things, too.
My guess is the experiment is to eventually get us to the point that embalming is no longer necessary. Morticians and coroners have already noticed that people now take longer to decay when they die and the speculation is that all of the preservatives and antibiotics in our food is the cause.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Well let's see. Pesticides, smoking, alcohol, illegal drugs, birth control pills. Oh there's plenty of expermentation going on. A lot of it willingly. As the population gets older the results should start popping up real soon. That's why you want to go into the medical field. A growth industry for failed experiments.
It's easy to dismiss the argument against GM food because it is all based on ignorance and paranoia. You can only accept the whacky opposition if you LACK critical thinking.
Where were you when the voynix came?
What I'm saying is, without an explicit mechanism for either our digestive systems to start reading the rapidly-decaying DNA floating outside its protective cell walls, or for that DNA to suddenly and spontaneously exhibit bacterial or viral infection vectors, there is no place where things can go wrong on a genetic level. The rest of the plant matter that we can't absorb at that stage of digestion is passed on for further break-down, or excreeted at the final stage. I'm sure you've seen those bits of corn that you couldn't digest, and they're no more dangerous now than before.
There's a great deal of unwarranted fear-mongering going on behind the anti-GM food movement. They're scared of change, and of the pace that change comes at. They yell and scream loudly about it, and stick to their "organic" foods (which is a rather misleading title in itself, as the title of "organic" technically means that it need only contain carbon to be accurate - there's no regulation on this label in most places). Meanwhile, they offer no evidence that anything is wrong, just a lot of FUD. If you wish to say that something is dangerous, that's fine. Give me proof that its dangerous, and I might start listening to you. No "maybe"s or "what if"s. Solid facts, statistically relevant samples, and long term studies. GM foods have been around for roughly 12 years, and in that time over 100 studies have been done and no health risks have been found. I'll source this if you want, although I'm certain you have access to Google too. Until you can show me a reason to be concerned, stop crying wolf. Meanwhile the benefits such as increased yields, decreased maintenance and pesticide reliance, decreased irrigation requirements, and many others are here, real, tested and shown.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
Just remember, a fertility rate of 2.1 (from what I remember) is needed to keep a population level. This keeps it level, instead of increasing, due to various things such as accidents/diseases/murder/other that kill people before they have kids and to account for people who do not have kids at all.
Hmm... Looking at the overpopulaiton website, it looks like the population of the world will stabilize somewhere between 2050 and 2100. Probably at what, 7-8 billion?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Unfortunately, all of our evidence that any food is safe is macroscopic. I haven't really kept up on to date with this, but I don't remember seeing any evidence that GM food was dangerous, it was simply the lack of evidence that it was safe.
BTW, My city was used as the control for the origional flouride treatments in the early 1900's Only retarted morons are afraid of the Flouride in water.
I've always thought a resistance to floridation was unfounded, but my two brothers and I grew up in a town without it and none of us has ever had a single cavity. A few of my friends I grew up with also didn't have any. Certainly we weren't a cavity free town, but how does this compare to places with Floridation? Do no kids there get cavities?
Our hometown actually tried to floridate the water again in the late 1990's and they rejected it again. I didn't follow the debate then as I no longer lived there, so I don't know if conspiracy theories played a role in their decision to reject it.
How is this moderated Troll when someone (below) asks essentially the same question and it gets modified +5 Insightful?
I was puzzled as well by the summary's assertion. Glad I didn't ask...
[[Jdapnc. O,..y (Nuts...keyboard stuck in Dvorak mode again.)
I thought the world's largest medical experiment was the Drug War, including the alcohol and tobacco businesses. Nearly a total success, too, lasting well over a half millennium.
--
make install -not war
Nice straw man. I would say there is a significant difference between the selective breeding of cattle to improve milk production and the injection of bovine growth hormone (BGH) to achieve that end. For example, there is indication that BGH causes health problems in cows and results in more pus in milk. Personally, if I'm drinking milk, I'd rather it came from healthy animals and that the milk has a lower pus count.
Or let's take a more obvious human example: steriods. Steriods are natural. They are important to the functioning of the human body. Still, it doesn't mean it is a good idea to create synthetic varieties and inject them. You certainly would want to know a lot more about the benefits and risks before choosing that course of action, wouldn't you? I know I would.
Now, I think the thrust of the GM foods argument is that eating these foods is the equivalent of putting an unknown substance into your body and not knowing how it will effect it long term. Since GM foods are new, no one knows what the impact will be on people's bodies over the long haul. However, we do know that there are both advantages (disease resistant crops) and disadvantages (GM crops creating super-weeds that require stronger herbicides) to these crops in the short term.
I worry when people just claim something is safe without actually testing it via the scientific method. People said that BGH was completely safe when it came out too. However, saying it doesn't make it so. That's why we test things - especially if it could have major health impact on entire populations.
You could argue that GM foods are necessary to feed the growing population of the world. But that is different than just saying they are safe or that isn't any different from what humans have been doing for centuries. It is different. If we are going to use science to create them, we should also use science to make sure that they are safe.
Of course, we won't have the data to make a determination for decades. In the meantime, please stop pretending the question is settled. Use the good arguments available to you and argue that the benefits outweigh the risks. To argue that you are certain that there are no risks undermines your argument completely and makes people reading what you say question your judgment.
What you are saying is BS. GM crops in general result in MORE pesticides being used, e.g:i dparam=20031203121506&MenuPoint=D-I-B&CFID=5476589 &CFTOKEN=49191966&MenuPoint=D-I
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/contentlookup.cfm?uc
The world's largest medical experiment is aspartame and MSG, and it's being conducted by food manufacturers and multinational conglomerates with the FDA's blessing.
And you and I are the guinea pigs.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
IIRC, Josef Mengele and his colleagues still hold this record.
The problem with GM, like FDA drug testing is that the makers have an interest in not finding problems.
:)
But if the product does damage say in 30 years - then the damage could be huge.
If GMfood is labelled - and it is not in the US - then one could see over time the effect of
eating it or avoiding it. What is a GMmodification causes a 'Vioxx like' product to be inserted in the food, by accident. The effects could be terrible. And with monoculture farming, impossible to reverse!
Aspartame and MSG cumulative, harmful products. I suspect that the effects of poor quality food in the U.S
and the fat epidemic, may be caused by additives which make you eat more ( e.g. aspartame and
msg [and msg has many other names]) are causing that US Health care costs [now 15% of GDP] to contimue to rise AND that may be the mechanism that causes the US to do badly in the next 20 years.
Making the food purer with less additives so that it can actually 'go bad' may mean better health
and less medicine and drugs! Oh dear - big pharma has to sell more drugs. Sorry!
I agree that we hardly have a shortage of people, but dude... cancer's not a virus! It's completely natural, occuring due to genetic mutation during cell division, and most of the time goes completely unnoticed - the immune system takes care of it. Sometimes tho, it gets out of hand, and it's very sad for the people involved. We should be worried about prolonging life to the point where we can't support people (we already don't do a great job at that). Education and improving living conditions helps - population growth is decreasing in developed countries, because people have lives and careers and are putting off having kids til later and later.
/not/ going to stop (nor should it).
Unfortunately, the uneducated tend to reproduce a lot more, with most of their kids growing up little and doing the same.
If we keep working on educating and improving opportunities for people, hopefully the effects will cancel out those of our continued study of extending life; something that's
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
AIDS isn't a virus, it's a collection of symptoms that describes the state of your immune system, caused, for example, when the HIV virus destroys it so it can no longer protect you from infection. But not necessarily, there are other paths to it, just nowhere near as common.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Excuse me, but am the only person who noticed that this "experiment" has no control population, no experimental population, no placebos, etc...
I believe what we have here is a medical study on the longitudinal form...they have been run before (I recall one at Harvard which tracked 40,000 men for several decades, if memory serves me right) with quite large populations.
Let's get our terminology right...
Yours,
Jordan
Not all makers of genetically modified foods are doing so strictly in the interest of money. I suggest you read up on Norman Borlaug. Due to his work in the field of crop modification, he is widely credited with saving over a billion lives. Yes, a BILLION. WITH A "B". He is quite possibly the greatest man to ever live.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
Explain then, how the Innuit of Greenland lived for hundreds of generations free of heart disease eating essentially the same way as (for example) polar bears - almost nothing but the fatty bits of meat of animals they killed. Heart disease only appeared in their population when they encountered western refined foods made from flour and sugar. The same thing has been observed with native americans and australians too.
I've done two years of research on this subject. If you want to see some of the evidence yourself, visit the website of the Western A Price foundation.
As for critical logic, consider this: untreated childhood diabetes, leukaemia etc kill before puberty. These people would not be able to reproduce. Therefore, if these diseases were purely genetic, they would be selected out of the gene pool - but they have not been.
"1. Air America Radio. If the plumbers and coffee shops that advertise on our local affiliate (in a major metro market) are any indication, the big media money isn't in criticizing the Bush regime. So they solicit money from individuals who want a free-as-in-open-source media even though the contributors aren't given a financial stake in the station's success."
How does this stack up to the $875,000 in taxpayer grants Air America received in funds diverted from the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club charity? Is it going to pay them back?
Where were you when the voynix came?
There is a danger, but not from eating the plants. The danger is that companies will now own patents on the food you eat. There's a scary monopoly.
Oh, and the new plants are not allowed to breed with other plants; this screams "monoculture", which means that as soon as a bug discovers how to eat/infect/destroy one plant, all of them are doomed.
Ah! A well thought out and reasonable objection! Thank you sir! Your points make sense. I suppose that some of this could be countered by other bio-tech firms making comperable (although genetically distinct, and thus hopefully not suceptible to whatever might kill a different strain) products to compete with ones already in use. If they were able to price them competitively, then I imagine that they would see use, thus reducing the monoculture problem possibilities and eliminating the monopoly conditions. Again, this all depends on some company stepping up to the plate. Like the problems that many GM products were designed to help solve, the answer isn't an easy one to follow through on.
Another possibility is that those same companies that developed the now-vulnerable strain could then modify it to be resistant or immune to whatever menace may rear its ugly head in some kind of biological tit-for-tat game, but that's not a quick solution. Just thinking (typing) out loud here though.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
The retard put his foot in his mouth again. Now look where it got him.
Fucking dumbass.
Lord High Crapflooder The Right Honourable Vlad Craig Esther McDavenpherson III
Destroyer of Mercatur.Net
If all 6.6+ billion people in the world right now reduced their fertility to 2.5 right now, the population would be at about 13 billion by 2050, and continue growing. Human population has doubled since 1965, in just 40 years.
Look at Google Earth and see what percentage of the planet hasn't been warped by humans. Meadows into cities, diverse forests into clear-cut tree farms, rivers into dammed lakes and lakes pumped to turn desert into irrigated crop circles, rain forest turned into cattle farms, wild animal migrations destroyed by fences and roads, mountains into pit quarries, river deltas into industrial sludge sediment muck. Nuclear testing grounds, supersites, and gunnery ranges. Industrial humans have only been in the Western US for 150 years and this we have brought this to this recently unaltered land. We have added 35% more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in the last 150 years. Our current massive population is busy consuming our one-time gift of non-replaceable resources to maintain our current unsustainable industrial way of life.
50,000 western lowland gorillas left, 600 mountain gorillas, 1600 giant pandas, what were 60,000,000 American bison down to 1000 by 1890. 150,000 chimpanzees left worldwide. And 6.6 billion people. Humans have a massive impact on the world, and the main worry is not hunger: starvation is just the only foreseeable equilibrium point for our population, and will come when we have far passed our maximum sustainable population. Hunger comes from poverty, a symptom of overpopulation and inequality, and people in poverty have high infant mortality, poor education, and many children. How can there be less poverty when we have less resources to spread among more people?
If one coffee tree produces about two pounds of coffee a year, how much rain forest has been cut down for your personal supply of coffee trees? Where did the copper wiring, steel, wood, and concrete your house is made of come from? The plastics and metals that surround you right now. The chemicals used to etch the circuits on your CPU, the tantalum, gold, lithium, aluminum in your electronics, steel cars, airplanes and the energy they all use (coal, petroleum, uranium, dammed rivers...)? Can 6.6 billion people have your lifestyle? We are the big experiment I think.
But hey, the odds approach 100% that I'll be dead by 2070, guess I'll just party until then...
*eco-jihad mode off*
Then they can correlate the data with criminal records and catch the criminals before the crime is commited. :)