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100,000 Californians To Be Gene Sequenced

Posted by Soulskill on from the homing-in-on-the-prius-gene dept.

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."

17 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. Not sequencing by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

    1. Re:Not sequencing by SUB7IME · · Score: 4, 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.

  2. The Good, the Bad, the Ugly... by LUH+3418 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The good thing is that this kind of data will help us develop tests to predict the occurrence of many diseases, and perhaps understand their causes better.

    The bad is that private insurance companies are likely to eventually *require* you to get a DNA sample, and possibly reject you if they determine your genes predispose you to old-age diseases.

    Where it gets ugly, is that this will be yet another tool that could allow screening of unborn fetuses, and potentially selective abortions. I'm not personally against this. We're overpopulated anyways, but some people clearly don't like that idea.

    1. Re:The Good, the Bad, the Ugly... by Red+Flayer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's only "bad" if you turn out to be predisposed, in which case your higher risk will no longer be subsidized and you'll have to pay fair premiums in proportion to your risk.

      Thereby making the cost of insurance prohibitive to those with genetic predisposition to serious, expensive-to-treat maladies. This works out exactly the same as denying those people insurance coverage, unless they are very wealthy.
      This defeats the general purpose of medical insurance (which IS for the healthy to subsidize the sick).

      From a libertarian standpoint (yours, I'm assuming, from prior discussions), why not just get rid of health insurance altogether? That's the only way to ensure that everyone pays their "fair" costs into the system. That seems to be what you're getting at, so why mince words?

      --
      "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
    2. Re:The Good, the Bad, the Ugly... by Idiomatick · · Score: 3, Insightful

      God I hope you guys get your healthcare shit together before that happens. In a modern country the data could be used to save lives... In the US I can only see it saving money and costing many thousands of lives.

    3. Re:The Good, the Bad, the Ugly... by element-o.p. · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Awesome. I can see it now: those who actually need health insurance will be unable to get any. Those who will be making payments for the next n decades, but rarely -- if ever -- actually obtaining any benefit from the insurance will be the only ones who will qualify for coverage.

      --
      MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
    4. Re:The Good, the Bad, the Ugly... by ishobo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      From a libertarian standpoint (yours, I'm assuming, from prior discussions), why not just get rid of health insurance altogether? That's the only way to ensure that everyone pays their "fair" costs into the system. That seems to be what you're getting at, so why mince words?

      Bravo. Any free market libertarian should not be using any type of insurance. Afterall, insurance is a form of wealth redistribution.

      --
      Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
    5. Re:The Good, the Bad, the Ugly... by JesseMcDonald · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Any free market libertarian should not be using any type of insurance. Afterall, insurance is a form of wealth redistribution.

      This demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of both the concept of "wealth redistribution" in respect to libertarian philosophy and the concept of insurance itself.

      First, insurance is not "wealth redistribution" even in the limited sense described below, at least when it's not actually being turned into some sort of forced-"charity" scheme via regulation. The projected value of an insurance subscription is equal to the projected value of the premiums being paid (less overhead and the insurer's profit margin, of course, just as with any other service). You're neither subsidizing nor being subsidized by your fellow insurees. What you get from insurance—what makes it worthwhile enough to justify the overhead—is that people tend to prefer that their future costs be predictable. Insurance takes a high-cost, low-probability future event and, by pooling it with many similar events, turns it into a low-cost, predictable event in the form of periodic insurance premiums. Critically, risk is conserved with respect to each insuree; no one pays extra to subsidize anyone else's above-average projected cost (risk). In retrospect, of course, some will be compensated more than others depending on the actual circumstances, but ex ante no insurees can be said to benefit at others' expense.

      Second, "wealth redistribution" is only a problem when it's involuntary. Donating to charity is perfectly consistent with libertarian philosophy, and something many libertarians do frequently. When libertarians speak negatively of "wealth redistribution" they're referring to redistribution by force, involuntarily, which is an entirely separate matter. The force is what makes it wrong, not the redistribution.

      --
      "The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
    6. Re:The Good, the Bad, the Ugly... by sjames · · Score: 3, 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.

    7. Re:The Good, the Bad, the Ugly... by bluej100 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Insurance is for amortizing risk over time and population. Knowing the degree of risk makes it better insurance, not worse--it's not illegal to charge higher car insurance rates to people who are bad drivers. It's the role of the government to redistribute wealth to those who've gotten a crappy start, not the role of insurance firms. (And I dispute the notion that those unfortunates who share our nationality should be our first moral responsibility.)

    8. Re:The Good, the Bad, the Ugly... by causality · · Score: 3, Insightful

      From a libertarian standpoint (yours, I'm assuming, from prior discussions), why not just get rid of health insurance altogether? That's the only way to ensure that everyone pays their "fair" costs into the system. That seems to be what you're getting at, so why mince words?

      Bravo. Any free market libertarian should not be using any type of insurance. Afterall, insurance is a form of wealth redistribution.

      Many others have corrected you in basic terms of what insurance actually is, and when the redistribution of wealth is undesirable (i.e. when it's done by force).

      I wanted to add one thing. Insurance of any kind is based on the principle of indemnity. This is a fundamental concept behind all forms of insurance. To summarize indemnity, it means restoring you to where you were (i.e. after a loss). It means that a policyholder does not profit from filing an insurance claim. If your car takes $5000 in damages from an accident, and your insurance company pays $5000 for your car, X dollars to cover your rental vehicle while your car is being repaired, etc., your net gain is zero. You are only paid because you incurred a covered loss, and are only paid the amount that the covered loss has cost you. That's indemnity.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
  3. Re:Damned sure glad... by interkin3tic · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Don't consider yourself safe just yet:

    "This is a force multiplier with respect to genome-wide association studies," says Cathy Schaefer, a research scientist at Kaiser Permanente, a health-care provider based in Oakland, CA, whose patients will be involved...
    Kaiser Permanente is meanwhile trying to expand its collection of biological samples to 500,000 by 2013.

    While the scientists running the experiment are clearly doing this to actually advance research, and it will, I'm thinking someone at Kaiser is hoping this will pave the way for "You want health insurance? We just need to sequence your genome first. Oh, sorry, you're going to get Huntingtons disease. Good luck with that."

  4. Re:Damned sure glad... by Idiomatick · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  5. s/Sequenced/Genotyped by ianbean · · Score: 3, Informative

    Maybe everyone should read the article. They're being genotyped (700,000 SNPs by Affymetrix array) not sequenced. There is a significant difference...

  6. Re:Other countries by Schickeneder · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You have universal healthcare in Sweden, so all the citizens should theoretically get equal/fair treatment anyway. People in America aren't generally afraid of having that "personal" information known, rather they worry about the possible consequences of private healthcare providers and employers accessing that data and discriminating.

  7. Re:Damned sure glad... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    That depends on how you define "publish." I know I have many copies of my DNA, and I've even distributed some of them.

  8. Re:Damned sure glad... by SUB7IME · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is why we passed GINA: http://www.genome.gov/24519851