The following is an excerpt.
The promise of personalized medicine with genome sequencing might soon imbue humanity with terrific powers to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease — with perhaps also the ability to gain insight into ourselves and our genetic place within the collective.
In the United Kingdom, the government has committed more than $150 million to sequence 100,000 genomes within the National Health System, allowing researchers to gain clinically relevant data across a large patient population. John Burn, a professor at Newcastle University’s Institute of Genetic Medicine, wrote an editorial published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal extolling the benefits of genome sequencing, to be followed by a rebuttal.
Burn acknowledges that while privacy abuses might be a concern, the benefits to gene sequencing for the individual and population would be manifold, with partnerships among government and pharmaceutical companies potentially yielding new drugs and devices targeting genetic subgroups, including those one in every 17 people with a genetic predisposition for disease.
Read the full story: Genome Sequencing Should Become Universal, Benefiting All, Researcher Says
