Why Whole-Genome Testing Hurts More Than it Helps
By H. Gilbert Welch and Wylie Burke,
Los Angeles Times
| 04. 27. 2015
Untitled Document
President Obama proposes to plunk down $215 million on "precision medicine," and the National Institutes of Health and its National Cancer Institute will spend it by sequencing the whole genome of a million or more Americans.
Is whole-genome testing the path to health? The short answer is no.
The main problem with the proposal is that the research is bound to produce more noise than signal. The issue isn't genetics but "big" data. The basic idea of precision medicine is to look for patterns in the genome that seem to travel with problems we all care about: diabetes, heart disease, cancer and dementia. But there are a lot of possible patterns to look for.
Imagine there were only 10 data points in a person's genome and that each point could only take on one of two values: red or green. The first could be red or green, the second red or green and so forth. The number of possible patterns that could emerge from those 10 data points is 2 to the 10th power — 1,024 patterns...
Related Articles
By Annika Inampudi, Science | 08.01.2025
In June, Sara* received a message asking whether she wanted to continue to participate in a massive, multicenter research project led by scientists at Aarhus University in Denmark. The iPsych study, the message said, had sequenced her genetic data from...
The Center for Genetics and Society is delighted to recommend the current edition of GMWatch Review – Number 589. UK-based GMWatch, a long-standing ally, was founded in 1998 by Jonathan Matthews as an independent organization seeking to counter the enormous corporate political power and propaganda of the GMO industry and its supporters. Matthews and Claire Robinson are its directors and managing editors.
CGS works to ensure that social justice, equity, human rights, and democratic governance are front...
By Katherine Drabiak, Journal of Medical Ethics Forum | 08.07.2025
Adapted from Mitochondrial DNA at
National Human Genome Research Institute
Recently, media outlets around the world have been reporting on children born from pronuclear genome transfer (sometimes called “3-parent IVF,” “mitochondrial donation” or “mitochondrial replacement therapy”) at Newcastle Fertility Center...
By Annika Inampudi, Science | 07.10.2025
Before a baby in the United States reaches a few days old, doctors will run biochemical tests on a few drops of their blood to catch certain genetic diseases that need immediate care to prevent brain damage or other serious...