Studying Your Own Genes
Today, Ms. Terry is part of a growing movement to unlock medical secrets by empowering patients to gather, control and even analyze their own health data. For some people, that means posting detailed personal information, family histories and genetic test results online for all to see. Others may decide to make public only limited information or to grant access exclusively to researchers who agree to share the results of their studies.
Members of this loose collective of amateurs, who call themselves “health hackers” and “citizen scientists,” also perform their own analyses and use the Internet to create and run experiments and clinical trials. They all believe that too much science happens behind closed doors.
Full Wall Street Journal article worth reading.
Good in a way; scary in a way. Good, in that I’m one of those potential patients who’s ready to have a chip with all my health data implanted in my neck. You know, just in case… However, I’m more than a bit reluctant to have non-health professionals who don’t know a tongue depressor from a popsicle stick trying to diagnose what’s wrong with me. The health care media do enough of that.
Why shouldn’t we study our own genes? What’s wrong with that?
“Citizen” scientists?! Didn’t the French try this during the revolution? Or was that the Russians? Anyway, the outcome was predictably the same. If more sunlight on these data means more opinions from qualified professionals, that can’t be bad, assuming the data was divulged voluntarily. But citizen scientists, like Al I think that’s just scary.
Interesting concept.
I like this movement and I hope that it continues to grow. But I have to wonder if people are going to find out things about themselves, through studying family histories and genetic test results, that they didn’t know beforehand or expect to find out.