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100,000 Californians To Be Gene Sequenced
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."
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.
At least get your racist history right. China had circled the globe in 1300s created the great wall of China, the still current largest man made channel, and the forbidden city, while they mapped the sky. At this time they didn't bother even trading with the Europeans because they were so much more advanced that they seemed like dirty savages. The largest fleet that Europe had at the time were Venician longboats armed with bows. Would have been easy for China to conquer them and the anchors of their ships weighed more than the European ships and the fact that they had bombs at the time.
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.
Maybe everyone should read the article. They're being genotyped (700,000 SNPs by Affymetrix array) not sequenced. There is a significant difference...
http://www.genome.gov/24519851
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
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.
Of note, this is single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping, and NOT sequencing. Only 700K common variants will be genotyped. While individuals could certainly be identified in the database by their SNPs (as few as 24), this project does not employ high-throughput sequencing. The title of the summary is misleading.
This is why we passed GINA: http://www.genome.gov/24519851
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 and if you really want details you can talk to Affymetrix (I bet these are the arrays they will use).
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.
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.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
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.