Personalized Genomic Medicine: Who to believe

TAG of the Week:

“Personalized Genomic Medicine: Who to believe”

Similar to one of our latest readings, , translating the knowledge of our genes into actual use in medicine is easier said than done. The article from class was aimed to teach doctors how to speak about genomics to patients. This new article is calling for a new system of personalized medicine. Do you think such a system is possible? Now that you are beginning to understand how environment, epigenetics, and variation create different outcomes from the same genes, how can the intricacies and details of each individuals genome ever be used to form a strict translation and used to inform patients on their health risks?

Is an X equals Y diagnoses ever really possible with so many confounding factors? And are physicians inept enough to be the ones making decisions based on genomes?

http://vectorblog.org/2012/01/seeking-clarity-genomics-sleuths-set-out-for-the-prize/

(Thank you to one of our past HS320 students for sending this blog in!!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5JfOU2efJY

Sleepless in Genomics

TAG of the Week:  "Why People Can Run on Little Sleep"

"My long-term goal is to someday learn enough so we can manipulate the sleep pathways without damaging our health," says human geneticist Ying-Hui Fu at the University of California-San Francisco. "Everybody can use more waking hours, even if you just watch movies."

Do you think that by taking a gene variant and exploiting it to manipulate our body so we can accomplish more things in the day  is a good idea or a harmful one? Do you think that with more waking hours people would be more productive or wasting more time? How important do you think it is to have sleep and to allow your body to rest? And how important is it to be able to accomplish more things in the day? Aside from workaholics and college students, do you think that this research could potentially benefit certain other people?   

Read News Clip:

http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/112502/why-people-can-run-on-little-sleep-wsj