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Sequencing the Unborn
sciencehabit writes "What if you could read much of your child's medical future while it was still in the womb? Taking a major step toward that goal, one fraught with therapeutic potential and ethical questions, scientists have now accurately predicted almost the whole genome of an unborn child by sequencing DNA from the mother's blood and DNA from the father's saliva (abstract)."
I don't see how this is possible, given that genetic recombination happens. Unless the parents are very genetically similar (ick), there should be billions of possibilities.
"I don't think it would be ethical to use this to screen for late-onset diseases like Alzheimer's or cardiovascular diseases, for example."
To which I have to say, "No shit, Sherlock".
Let's hope those ethical concerns have some weight when this process rolls out as a voluntary, or perhaps even mandatory, screening process.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
And it was called Gattaca.
Of course genetics are not everything. The environment, even within the womb, affects development. But, after enough genome wide association studies are performed, gattaca does not seem too far away.
Reading this, since they took the dna from blood and saliva, not from the fetus, it raised the question for me, why wait until conception?
In the future, will couples get genetically screened during pre-marital counseling, to see if they have good compatibility (in terms of not having high risk of genetic problems in offspring)? Sounds terribly un-romantic, doesn't it?
"Gattaca" wasn't fiction - it was an accurate prediction of a dystopian, fast-approaching and very real future.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
the future is now? if you have the money to get tested.
James Watson was the 3rd human fully sequenced about 8 years ago. The Nature article tsaid hat he had 20 defects matching the then defect database (about 5000 entries), none which were expressed. It said he should have had retinitis pigmentosa, which he did have. Our knowledge of genetic density is still primitive. Definitely too shaky for insurance filtring.
I imagine that artificial wombs will be invented long before the government gets into the child making business.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
What if you could read much of your child's medical future while it was still in the womb?
The more worrying question here in the U.S. is, "What if your insurance company could decide your child's medical access while it was still in the womb, based on poorly-understood genetic risk factors and eugenics pseudoscience?"
yes.... There is a 100% chance that it will be law in the US in the next 30 years. Go ahead and add in the predictors for aggression and aversion to authority and you have the perfect country of slaves for our 400 masters. It will look something like this only slightly updated... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1i6ozLpNr3Q
This problem is my area of research (didn't RTFA, just assuming this is how they did it).
Am I the only one who thinks this is kind of amusing?
They took the blood from the mother after she was pregnant, when there was fetal DNA in her bloodstream and are essentially doing a 'process of elimination' among the fetus, mother, and father. So while you could do a pre-conception screen, and it may indicate probabilities for genetic disorders or diseases with a genetic component, it wouldn't be the same thing as in TFA.
What's decidedly unclear from the summary: they're sequencing fetal cells found in the mother's blood. It was separated from the mother's own blood cells with a nify trick using the father's DNA.
So it allows them to sequence the baby's type without having to touch the infant itself. They're not making any "mother+father=baby" predictions before the baby is conceived, which would be impossible just from their ordinary (somatic) cells.
I'm pretty sure you are the only one, and I'm pretty sure you've got issues, bro.
Write failed: Broken pipe
How could they not resist such power and control?
What you wrote here does not make sense.
I accurately predicted almost all the numbers in the lotto draw last Saturday.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
People are flawed. Left to their own passions, they will murder, rape, kidnap and steal.
People need laws to stop them from descending into savagery.
Per TFA, the fetus' DNA is in its mom's blood. So you cannot get any (non-random) information prior to conception.
What about the people that terminate because it's a girl?
I was thinking Mit yearned for a life style more like the setting in Monty Python's Holy Grail. I'm surprized that Mit Romney has Sense of Humor logic. I'll read the manual again. You know, "trust, but verify", apologies to President Reagan.
those that can pay for optimization, and those that can't. The gulf between the two gets ever-wider.
don't vote GOP as that will be what insurance will be like.
A Riviera?
You're absolutely right, AC.
I don't know why somebody quoted the script, considering a script is not necessarily a director's final vision of the story. I guess one could consider it a parallel universe version in which those scenes are left in; I believe the scenes were shot and ended up on the cutting room floor, based on the doctor's mouth moving without any speech - if the scene were to end there, it would have been more natural for the shot to end on a mouth closed pose.
Those looking for confirmation can check out GATTACA at YouTube. ( You know, that site with videos of toddlers dancing to music in the background that get DMCA'd out of existence and doesn't have any real copyright infringement ;) ) It'll be in the second video of the playlist, at around 1:35.
There's a difference between an orange seed and a sprouted orange seed. And plant life doesn't have a distinct stage called birth. If murdering a tree is illegal (let's assume), when does killing that orange plant become murder?
Birth is a relatively arbitrary point to consider in a lot of ways.
In the future, will couples get genetically screened during pre-marital counseling, to see if they have good compatibility (in terms of not having high risk of genetic problems in offspring)?
Commonly done now, for Ashkenazi Jews to check for certain endemic problems (Cystic Fibrosa, I think), and it was certainly discussed for Sickle Cell Anemia.
Sounds terribly un-romantic, doesn't it?
No more unromantic than making up a pre-nup. Marriage contracts used to be common for guildsmen, let alone nobility. And, at 40+% divorce rate, maybe "romantic" is a tad over-rated.