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This seems interesting. How long until people are sequenced at birth and their ailments predicted from that? (I know they're already doing it on a small scale,
by fao_ 11y ago
This seems interesting. How long until people are sequenced at birth and their ailments predicted from that? (I know they're already doing it on a small scale, but I'm talking of it as a routine procedure).
How long still until our memories are able to be stored, etc ad nauseum.
Very exciting stuff!
- eggie 11y agoExciting but mundane. A lot has been invested but there have been very few useful results. It turns out the genome offers very little more than you already know from living in your body every day.
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoMundane for the most part, but horrifying in other aspects. Imagine if we were able to identify who was likely to be gay back a few decades ago, say during the AIDs scare? Or imagine what would happen even today in places where homosexuals are put to death?
- noname123 11y agoThanks eggie for your insight. Was wondering if you can give more specifics as to what you think are the challenges in going from a human genome assembly to drug discovery.
- magicalist 11y agoThere's a wealth of knowledge in there, it just turns out it's incredibly complicated and everything is interrelated (exactly as you'd expect from a system that evolved). The problem is that the media has been selling this idea of personalized medicine for decades now on the premise that we'll find a single gene for every malady and physical advantage and be able to then tweak them at will.
- fao_ 11y agoGenome sequencing is extrememly useful for targeting things like cancer treatments[1][2], etc. It's still in its infancy, and needs some more time. [1](Couldn't find a better source): http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2015/05/05/ibms-watson-enters-market-for-analyzing-cancer-genetics/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2015/05/05/ibms-wa... [2]: http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/types/targeted-therapies/targeted-therapies-fact-sheet http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/types/targeted-...
- lfuller 11y agoYou should check out Gattaca [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/]. It's a great movie that explores some of the negatives that crop up from a society that genetically sequences all citizens from birth.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoI thought that movie pulled the punch. Turns out, the 'normal' guy actually had some genetic defect that SHOULD have excluded him from service. So it wasn't about discrimination after all.
- magicalist 11y agoI thought that was the whole point. The movie wasn't about easy answers. In many ways they were right and he was the inferior human, but this led to horrible discrimination, relegating "natural" humans to second class status (but horrible discrimination built from a series of perfectly reasonable business decisions). It was also a movie about the power of the human will, but it wasn't about will conquering all, it was an exploration of a possible world where our notions of fairness and someone with sufficient drive surely overcoming all obstacles may be completely upended.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoI got something else out of it. I thought the guy was a dirty cheat, risking billions in exploration costs just so he could personally be on the mission. What if he'd had a heart attack during the flight? The main plot of the movie torpedoed the big question of discrimination entirely. And then there was the matter of wearing business suits on a space mission. Just weird.
- magicalist 11y ago> What if he'd had a heart attack during the flight? Yeah, that was part of the point. That was shown multiple times to be a high probability event. There's a reason the movie ends at lift off.