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A DNA Sequencer Cheap Enough For (Some) Doctors' Offices
cylonlover writes "Until recently, DNA decoding machines — fitting in the US$500,000 to $750,000 price range — would take weeks or even months to sequence a human genome, and the whole procedure would cost $5,000 to $10,000. That could be about to change, however, as Life Technologies introduces the Benchtop Ion Proton Sequencer — a machine that may finally deliver the power of genetics into the hands of ordinary doctors thanks to its $149,000 price tag and ability to decode a human genome in one day at a cost of $1,000."
I predict that the first buyers will be University research hospitals, and the Mayo Clinic.
It needs to drop a bit more before seeing it at your local pediatrician's.
Doctor: "Well, it looks like you have a common cold. But let's be sure, shall we? I just got this new DNA sequencing machine. Come back tomorrow."
The next day...
Patient: "Hebho bhoctor, bhat dho I habh?"
Doctor: "Well, it looks like you have a common cold. That will be $1000."
The third problem (once you solve the first two) is what the hell you do with all that information. At present, having a complete readout of your genome doesn't get you very far. Even after you've figured out what diseases that you are more at risk for, what do you do? Well, you keep an active, healthy lifestyle, drink in moderation, don't smoke etc. You didn't need all of that info for me to tell you that.
I don't see this in doctor's offices (except for the boutique practices that do everything to / for you for the specific purposes of lightening your wallet). Maybe it will allow smaller research groups to tackle projects that they couldn't afford to do. But it's a long way to clinical utility.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Yes, you bring your doctor a thumb drive with 3 billion base pairs of your genome, coding for 23,000 genes. Do you know what he says?
"What am I supposed to do with that?"
You hit the nail on the head. There is very little if any useful information for a doctor in full genome sequence, and most of it can be obtained with much cheaper genetic tests. ABI is ramping up the hype because they really need this instrument to be a good seller. Their first bet in the field was on a sequencing by ligation machine (SOLID) which did not sell very well.
Half of what was happening in Gattaca. Not even the interesting half.
Messing with genes was the logical response to the first half, though, which was gene discrimination. Or did you not notice that the main character was smart enough and driven enough to become a rocket engineer, but because of a chance of a flaw in other areas was relegated to menial labor.
It's not just that they wouldn't let him be an astronaut, either. They wouldn't even hire him as an engineer at all, as a "bad risk." And his love-life was implied to have suffered as well, with the matchmaking sequencers on every street corner....
The movie was about the horrors of discrimination, and the virtue of overcoming them, not gene manipulation, which is not a necessary precondition to gene discrimination. Regardless, I think it was probably supposed to be an allegory to present-day race discrimination, but with a narrative trick to make the character white, so white people wouldn't have any preconceived notions getting in the way of the message, rather than a direct prediction of the future, however prescient it may appear to have been.
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