More About "Personal" Genomics

No, I didn't make a mistake in the title. I know we talk about genomics and personalized medicine a lot, but in this case I really was referring to "personal genomics". We need more conversations, discussions and debates about how we as a society are going to deal with the inundation of personal gene and DNA information that is coming our way in the brave new world of $1000 genomes.

I have already written some on the subject in a previous post about the promise and the concerns.

I have also provided some links last week to some further information on the subject.

This week saw (at least)  two new entries into this important discussion that I thought were worthy of passing on.

The first of these was a wonderful show on the series "Nova" from WGBH Boston called "Cracking Your Genetic Code".  I thought it was a particularly good treatment of the whole science behind genomics and personalized medicine. If you missed it, or can't get it, for now the show is available online at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/cracking-your-genetic-code.html.

I really encourage you to invest the hour watching this show - it is excellent in my view.

The other is a particularly good article written by Christine S. Moyer of the (American Medical Association) Amednews.com staff. In this piece she writes more about the issues of what are we going to do with all of the information that we might be gleaning very soon. Entitled "Genome sequencing to add new twist to doctor-patient talks", it is written from a health care, ethical and societal point of view - exactly the debate that I have been insisting that we have not been having  nearly enough of.

I am very glad to see that these discussions are expanding and that the issues are starting to come out on the table. We owe it to ourselves to become much better informed and to steer this brave new world or else it will swamp us!