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There are not many areas of the economy where costs are one-millionth of what they were a decade ago. Biomedical research, however, is one of them. A decade ago, when scientists first managed to sequence the human genome, the cost of performing that magic was about $3-billion (U.S.) per person. These days, however, it has plunged to a mere $3,000 – and is falling further – as scientists take advantage of recent breakthroughs to “skim read” genetic patterns more efficiently and cheaply than ever.
That diminished price has one big implication: it is now possible for scientists to compare the genomic sequence of thousands of people and thus spot patterns of diseases that range from cancer to schizophrenia. Or as Eric Lander, a professor of biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told a conference last month in Aspen: “I don’t know how many million-fold improvements we have seen in a decade, but that is what we are living through in biomedicine. Amazing things are starting to happen now.”
So far, so heartwarming; or so it might seem. After all, if...
That diminished price has one big implication: it is now possible for scientists to compare the genomic sequence of thousands of people and thus spot patterns of diseases that range from cancer to schizophrenia. Or as Eric Lander, a professor of biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told a conference last month in Aspen: “I don’t know how many million-fold improvements we have seen in a decade, but that is what we are living through in biomedicine. Amazing things are starting to happen now.”
So far, so heartwarming; or so it might seem. After all, if...