Slashdot Mirror
Genetic Information on Major Diseases Uncovered
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."
1 ggaggaggtg gaggaggagg gctgcttgag gaagtataag aatgaagttg tgaagctgag
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
Information, knowledge good! what we do with it, usually not so good.
Can we expect (hope for) laws preventing this information being retrieved or considered when calculating insurance premiums or other times when this may lead to discrimination?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
And as such will adjust your insurance premiums accordingly.
I can just picture insurance companies champing at the bit to work market tests into their eligibility rules and rate structure, and employers trying to find ways to discriminate on the basis of having these markers.
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.
Does it include the "Windows fans disease"?
?
This is welcomed news for expecting parents. They can now potentially extract DNA from embryos to determine what diseases they are likely to have. With this technology, they could discard the bad ones and keep the good ones, thus producing healthy children. This may even help thrust forward our next step of evolution.
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.
A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
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.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Welcome to the brave new world, where everyone has a pre-existing condition.
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.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
You have a link to that doctor story?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I wonder how big the permutation is for the difference for humans and our close cousins. Such a number would in theory give very combination for every person possible. This could be useful for grouping and identifying certain sequences when we find matches with a group of people who have a common disease. Once we find common sequences we can start work on gene therapy.
The first five posts are about how evil this could be. Take off your tinfoil hats for once people. This is good science.
While it's great to hear that people are having leaps and bounds towards treating some of these diseases, I would like to point out that with the amount of information we know about hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease, it should be possible to almost completely wipe out premature development of these diseases in the non-elderly and healthy.
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, humanity needs to start taking a serious look at how they can prevent these diseases from forming by making adjustments in their lives now.
i.e. eating healthy (back to basics like fruits, veggies, milk, and eggs), going to the gym 2-3 times a week, and generally just taking some time out for their families and/or from all the stress.
That said, Crohn's disease, and rheumatoid arthritis probably cannot be prevented, or at least not to my knowledge of what I have read online. And to all the people who already have one of these diseases I hope that studies like these help bring us one step closer to helping overall quality of life.
h
Valkyrie is about to die! Wizard needs food -- badly!
Bowel inflammation HURTS! OUCHEE! You have no idea, gawd it HURTS! My only reprieve from the burning is to push out my prolapsed colon onto a tub of ice for soothing relief...
If I have speeding tickets, and my auto insurance carrier finds out about it, is that discrimination?
Is it to our long-term interests to force insurers to operate in ignorance?
Speaking as a statistical genetics insider, I can tell you that the replication of results in this field is very poor. A team of scientists somewhere will announce they found a gene for XYZ, which is reported in scientific journals and mainstream media -- however, the findings fail to be replicated by other scientists, and the negative results are usually not published. Over the years, hundreds of scientists have claimed to find genes responsible for diabetes, hypertension, autism, etc.
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.
I think that GP has a point. With most of the we-found-a-way-to-aquire-new-information-isn't-thi s-neat type of articles, the reaction on slashdot is usually favorable. But when it comes to genetic data, it does seem that paranoia arises.
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.
GP claims that there is a trend. Is he right?
Hmm interesting. I'm type 2. I need to find more info on this research. I always thought it wasn't about my diet or excercise.
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 important in digestion, it's also important for the immune system to target stuff to kill)
So this is a good thing, not something used to abort a pregnancy. I know I would never abort any kid I was blessed with, no matter what. Instead I beleive this can be used to get to the root cause of a disease and create a cure, no a treatment for the symptoms.
All those days of running Folding@Home have finally paid off! (for science at least)
I've long wondered what the effects of modern medicine have on natural selection. People who would normally die of natural genetic defects are living and breeding, which is causing the gene pool to retain these genetic defects.
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.
I was expecting a genetic analysis of the nasty stuff that attacks us: viruses and bacteria. Those cause diseases. Instead this story is about an analysis of human flaws. Why are we calling those flaws diseases? Nothing is attacking these people, they were just born that way.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
I have Crohn's Disease. No one in my family has ever had it before. We had no idea where it came from. Now it is probable that it came from my grandma who had type 1 diabetes. This could also lead to much better treatments for Crohn's and diabetes. Now joint research with experts in both diseases can come up with new ideas.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
...who needs health insurances when you *know* you're gonna die?
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
Given the founder of planned parenthood was a Nazi and a eugenicist they might not need blood samples from outside their own part to find it.
Now this is something I have thought about long and hard (though no hard research to back it up) about. WHat happens when we do get the power to *poof* the bad genes out of existance from an unborn infant? Well, obviously they won't develop "problem A", but what about other factors? For instance, I know that black people in regions of Africa are born with sickle-cell anemia, but this also helps prevent a certain disease commonly transported by insects in the region. How do we know what (if any) other things might depend on that particular gene?
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?
One presumes you weren't born with the speeding tickets. One presumes the information about the speeding tickets will eventually go away.
If you choose to speed, the insurers should know about that. The question is whether it's ethical to deny insurance/jobs/whatever to people who did not choose/were born with/inherited high-risk, high-premium characteristics.
There are gray areas. Many people think it's fair to discriminate against gays because they think being gay is a choice, rather than being biologically determined. Likewise many people think it's fair to discriminate against people who are fat on the basis that fat people get fat by eating lots, despite evidence that weight might be mostly controlled by genetics.
But *I* don't think anyone should be allowed access to DNA records for insurance purposes, because it penalizes people for things they cannot control or fix.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Sorry, bogus thinking is implemented as an application-level protocol.
Much as some wish to blame their peccadilloes on the hardware, Paris Hilton had to work at being vacuous.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
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.
Navicula hydraulica plena anguilarum est. Omnes castelli tuus nostri sunt. Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
The problem is that advances in medicine have generally had the effect of prolonging life and making disease treatment more expensive rather than cheaper. Even one hundred years ago, people commonly died from diseases which are readily treatable today. Instead of incurring massive medical bills, their next of kin were usually left with the bill for a few doctor's visits, and that's it.
Now we have nuclear medicine, where a single 5 day dose of chemotherapy costs more than most folks make in a month... Instead of suddenly failing of an "unknown cause", cancer patients (and their families) often rack up hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of dollars in medical bills before the disease takes them. Instead of a cure, the medical industry now gathers windfall profits from delaying the inevitable.
And now we have drug companies patenting heartburn medication - which is available only by prescription.
Drug companies and the medical field have little incentive to cure diseases, but every incentive to treat them - preferrably, for the remainder of the patient's life.
It doesn't matter how healthy the population is - the drug companies will find something wrong to treat. After all, look at heartburn - instead of doing the right thing and telling patients to eat healthy, balanced meals, doctors are now prescribing medication which does not leave the patient healthier, but merely masks the body's reaction to a poor diet.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Although Margaret Sanger was indeed a eugenicist she was not a Nazi and in fact considered the Nazis to be "sad and horrible". Actually the biggest supporters of Mussolini in the United States were the businessmen, and we all know about Henry Ford.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Please let us of /. know what genetic projects are out there that can sequence or look for these problem genes.
Its nice they found a few problem genes. Now we have to turn around and find them within ourselves.
Thanks in advance,
Jim
Maybe what's needed is a different insurance model, thus:
========
You have genes for Known Condition X, but are presently asymptomatic. We don't KNOW if you'll ever develop symptoms, but there is a finite risk that you will do so.
Hence we will insure you against everything BUT Condition X. If you want insurance covering Condition X, we will sell it to you, but as a separate policy under rates that reflect the *odds and costs* associated with Condition X.
=======
Obviously under this scheme, it would be in the insurance company's best interest if all their clients were gene-mapped.
But it might also be in their clients' best interests -- you could cherrypick your insurance needs according to your known genetic risk factors, and pay accordingly, rather than the current shotgun system where everyone pays according to everyone else's *presumed* and averaged risk factors.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Great, this will kill my favorite TV show: "House". Every episode will have the same plot line...
Other doctor: "The patient is complaining of chest pain and tingling in..."
Dr. House: "Just run the frickin' DNA test and leave me alone!!"
.
.
.
Rest of the hour filled by witty banter and commercials.
I'm reading all the morals police comments here, and I'm quite surprised.
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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Insurance underwriting can break even and still be rational. Much of the money made by insurance companies is made by investing premium dollars into marketable securities (corporate and gov't bonds, stocks, etc.), from which the company derives investment income. In the break even situation, this is equivalent to borrowing money at a zero % interest rate, investing the proceeds at a higher interest rate, and paying off the loan at the end of its term. If underwriting is profitable, it is like borrowing money at a negative interest rate, amplifying the result.
This is possible because of the time lag between the payment of premiums and the payouts for insured losses. Insurance companies have billions of dollars of insurance in force spread over many different policies, so it is the average loss experience that counts.
In short, an insurance company can price policies that don't make a profit in unadjusted dollar terms and still be profitable as an insurance company (granted, its much easier if you avoid writing loss-making policies).
If you could put blocks on your gametes to make sure only the chromosomes you wanted to combine would combine; would you?
Blond hair, no heart-disease from my pop, and let's aim for hazel eyes.
It wouldn't be abortion. It'd be selective contraception.
I mean, you're allowed to pick your mate and fantasize about what your children will look like right now. So why not have a more hands on approach?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Genetic screening for embryos has been around for over a dozen years. They take a sample of amniotic fluid, which has some of the embryo's cells floating around in it, rather than from the embryo itself.
Now, back then they were just looking for things like Down's Syndrome and a few other things that were easily detected with then current technology (gender is pretty obvious, too). No doubt these days they can check for a lot more. But it's hardly new.
-- Alastair
::searching through the closet:: I knew it was in here somewhere
As someone that is 23 with rhumatoid arthritis any sort of research that can get any closer to more successful treatment or a cure, I find very exciting. Maybe by the time I'm 40 I'll be able to walk with out a cane.
I grew up complaining of ill health and was misdiagnosed for decades. If I had known that I was susceptible to Crohn's disease back then I would have been spared tremendous agony.
So stop whining about insurance and eugenics. The real reason to advance our medical knowledge is to stop the needless pain and suffering. How society deals with this information is society's problem.
I have bipolar and a young son.
This news is all about drugs, targeting expensive treatments to those with a certain genome, while the benefit of the drugs is questionable the profits are rising, and the side-effects are unknown.
This news should be about education rather than selection. I never came across therapy or psychology until my first breakdown - after 16 years of state education. With all the 1% incidents and including work mates, friends and relatives you will come across mental variation, Will you be trained to walk over the people (or pass them to professionals which is the same thing) or will you have the minimum education and life experience to respond to help both of you, a hand up not a hand out.
Just my 2 cent,
Turloch
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
Gattaca.
okinawa japan
Current US health insurance isn't a good example.
"Insurance" is about risk-pooling. This is a feature of most US health insurance policies, but it is not the largest feature to most people.
Most people have health insurance because of essentially monopolistic practices whereby the health insurance companies force the doctor's list price to be inflated in order for then to get 100% of a greatly reduced negotiated bulk price. So perhaps 40% of the bill disappears if you have health insurance.
I'm NOT talking about the part the insurance company actually pays, I'm just talking about the negotiated discount.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
I have mod points and was about to mark your post as down because it was not related to the post you are replying to directly, however, I thought a comment of clarification was in order, since what you say is true out of context.
I believe you may be helping readers confound "break even" in unadjusted and adjusted dollars. Instead, people need to compare adjusted dollars to adjusted dollars for both the insurance company and the person who is considering taking out a policy. The original poster surely meant to compare adjusted to adjusted dollars, so their point is still valid.
Note that the consumer can direct their own investing (which may be with another large institutional investor, or may not) on their own.
Standing alone, your comment is correct if you are meaning to correct people who don't understand interest, but in context, I hope nobody gets the idea that your comment invalidated the original poster's comment.