Booting up the age of personal genomics
A few months ago an US based startup 23andMe (see here) launched a web service that allows you to explore your genome and share it with friends. The site includes enough tutorials and explanations to initiate you in the basics of genomics so you will be able to understand most of the information provided after they analysed your DNA.
This is really big. The service is moderately expensive (399$ – one time fee) but opens up completely new possibilities and contribute to our self-understanding as biological/medical selves (here is a standard personal profile description on this site “Paternal haplogroup I1* -
I1-M253-ASgen … Maternal haplogroup V* – User# H935M… etc.” ). And our social relations…. So for example : the social network around you DNA data is trying to connect to you basing it’s decisions on things like : DNA match, same disease/sensibility, etc. When you use a demo account on this service you will see different announcements by other community members that are looking like : “Genomic type X 832 looking to share profiles and talk with genomic type Z,K and R”, etc.
I think that such a service is an important benefit in understanding the potential (long term) health risks that we face in our lives. At the same time I agree that such a collaborative system will significantly improve the current research that tries to link certain genes with diseases. And one more thing : I personally want this service : maybe I will pay the fee and register at this service 
I would also have one important reticence :
On the long run (like in 10-15 years) a widespread usage of such a system would make people more willing to accept the idea that this information can be used to choose friends, work colleagues, employers, etc. This could turn into something similar to what is happening right now with the hiring process in some companies : their HR people are googling to find more information (personal blogs, online posts, amazon wishlists, etc.) about potential employers. And this would really suck.
2 documentaries made by Richard Dawkins and Jeremy Taylor
The Blind Watchmaker : A plausible response to the classical teleological argument made by the ID supporters. The classical teleological argument runs like this :
“How could nature alone develop very specialised and complicated devices, without the intervention of an inteligent designer?”
Richard Dawkins has a book with the same title.
Nice guys finish first : A good explanation/defense of the selfish gene explanation paradigm in evolutionary biology. The main aim of this is to show that (aparent) cooperative behaviour – which we usually call altruistic – can be reduced to gene level individualism. The gene survival paradigm (in evolutionary biology) denies the truth of the group survival paradigm.
See Richard Dawkins – “The Selfish Gene” for a more detailed picture of this.
leave a comment