What Your DNA Knows
Worried about adverse drug reactions? You could consult your DNA:
For months, 30 scientists studied more than 2 million gene variants in Quake’s DNA. They found genes linked with sudden cardiac death and others suggesting he might be resistant to the anti-clotting drug clopidogrel. Based on their findings, Ashley recommended Quake start taking cholesterol-lowering statins. Quake declined.
But this procedure is not cheap. Just to sequence your DNA costs a pretty penny:
When the first human genome was sequenced, it cost about $3 billion. Decoding Quake’s genome cost around $50,000.
When Quake’s DNA showed elevated risk of heart disease, his physicians recommend cholesterol-lowering drugs. Given his family history of heart disease, a healthy lifestyle should have been the most logical recommendation.
Don’t know who Quake is, but I coulda’ saved him $50,000. Healthy life style and red yeast rice (supplement). Forget the statins.
This gene sequencing study might be a very nice example of how money for medical research can be wasted. It was funded by tax dollars from the U.S. National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and others.
According to the post, the Lancet paper describing the results concludes that “We need to get better at explaining what this information means for patients.” Really? You need more funding to understand how genes work? Who knew?
Comments from the post suggest that this particular grant may well have been known to be fairly worthless from the start. According to the article, “Muin Khoury, director of the National Office of Public Health Genomics at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said it wasn’t clear how genome sequences might help. ‘We simply cannot interpret … the vast amount of emerging data,’ he said. ‘The current information is incomplete, uncertain, potentially misleading and could lead to unnecessary procedures,’ he said.”
Here’s another viewpoint from an abstract in a 2010 review of the genetics of myocardial infarction by Schunkert et al.: “…essentially all Caucasians carry a variable number of risk alleles such that disease manifestation [of myocardial infarction or coronary artery disease] is affected to some extent by these inherited factors in basically all individuals.”
Judging from the picture on the Stanford website, Quake is indeed Caucasian.
I think Devon and Donna are mislsing the wider point, which is: valuable, helpful health information is available as long as price is no object.
Linda sez: “very nice example of how money for medical research can be waste”
This is one of the most shortsighted comments I’ve seen in a long time. This is the sort of research that, in time, can fundamentally revolutionize medicine.
artk: Is it possible, in your view, to ever waste money on medical research?
Linda asks about wasted research money.
Yes, much of the commercial drug development research is derivative trivial work focused on sidestepping patent expirations for existing drugs or making inexpensive existing generics proprietary. I’ll give you two examples, Xenoport spent untold millions on an extended release version of gabapentin, a drug that been in the public domain for 20 years or more. AstraZeneca, developed Nexium to counter the patent expiration of the virtually identical molecule, Prilosec. Both these cases diverted money that could have been used to create a really new cure.
As for fundamental research into the basic nature of biology, more is always better. This has always been government funding. By your logic, Crick and Watson’s work would have been a waste of money.
The claim that more is always better violates a basic premise of economics. And is obviously false.
With respect to fundamental research in biology, consider an extreme throught experiment: If everyone’s income for the year was expropriated and applied only to fundamental biological research would more be better in view of the fact that most of the population would likely cease to exist?
Linda proposes “an extreme thought experiment”.
Not just extreme, but reductio ad absurdum. An interesting tool, but in the end simply empty sophistry. The reality is that if you ask the research community, they can tell you that there are significant areas of inquiry that aren’t being pursued because of the lack of funding. The issue of basic research is there’s no way to tell beforehand if it’s worthwhile. When the government developed the internet, there was no way to project it would develop into what we have now. When the European governments through CERN developed the world wide web, they had no how it would fundamentally change the world. You can’t overestimate the value of fundamental research, there are things that defy economic analysis.
The question is not, “What does my DNA say about me?” but “Do I really want to know?”
We’re all predisposed to certain things, and knowing what we’re probably going to die from is a huge burden, especially if the process of dying is long and brutal. On the other hand, I can imagine knowing that you don’t have a gene for breast cancer being a huge relief. But, if you did the test for breast cancer, would you also be inclined to test for something like Alzheimers?
We know that we have predispositions, however science shows that only 2% of us has a genetic defect that will not allow us to live normally. Our predispositions are triggered from the invironment we put ourselves in. Despite the countless dollars spent on drug research and drugs in this country, our nation has seen a huge increase in all major disease. Statin drugs are responsible for liver transplant locations to be busier thah McDonalds drive throughs. To take a statin drug based on such a study makes no sense…but the reasoning continues to make a lot of dollars and that’s the real health issue we are faced with.
All of your comments are very interesting and it’s evident each of you are bright. Although we must all answer correctly the #1 question, where will I spend eternity?