Oct. 27, 2005 - 20:22 MDT

SOME GOOD

I'm trying to figure out how to condense information in an article today in the Rocky Mountain News. I'll try, in part:

The article is by Micahel Waldholz of Bloomberg News.

SCIENTISTS FINISH MAPPING GENES AT ROOT OF DISEASES

"An international team of researchers Wednesday announced the completion of a new kind of DNA map that will help scientists track down human genes involved in such common diseases as diabetes, depression and cancer."

"The researchers, from the U.S., Britain and Japan, said they had compiled a collection of 5 million different regions in the human genome where the composition of DNA varies from one person to another."

"This variation helps explain why some people develop illnesses and why people react differently to drugs, researchers said in a report this week in NATURE."

"We see this map as creating a sea change in understanding the root causes of common diseases," David Altschuler, a co-author of the report and biologist at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT in Cambridge, Mass., said in a telephone interview."

"The new map identifies sites sprinkled among the genes where chemical sequences consistently vary from one person to the next, the researchers said."

"As any two unrelated individuals' DNA sequence is 99.9 percent indentical, the 0.1 percent that varies helps explain why some people develop disease and others don't, Altschuler said."

"Altschuler said he expects the information in the new map to be used by drugmakers as they test the new medicines."

"The genetic differences, he said will be used to identify why some people develop side effects or respond faster to drugs.

"Eventually, doctors will test for these slight gene differences when deciding which drugs to prescribe, he predicted.

"Just as we now collect information, such as a person's cholesterol level or blood pressure, when we study drugs or decide about treatment, in the near future we will be collecting DNA to improve diagnosis and treatment he said."

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This is the kind of good news I dearly love to hear. A sign that some humans care enough about the rest of humankind to try to improve things for us all.

Of course, it looks to me that it will take quite a long time of genegeneering (my word).

But perhaps it will help folks like our older son and Heather as they both have weird reactions to medicines of all kinds, most of them quite unfavorable to their welfare.

Perhaps far down the line it will be possible to medicate a pregnant woman whose baby in carry has been diagnosed with some of those bad things so that the baby's genes can be altered.

Short of cloning it is, and appears to give us a leg up on treatment of humanity. One paragraph which impresses me is, Quote: "The map, which took three years to complete at a cost of $138 million and involved more than 200 researchers, is being made available FREE OF CHARGE to academic and corporate researchers." Unquote

Gives me a warm feeling that some educated folks are up to SOME GOOD . . . . . . . . .

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