I’ve been totally busy because of my summer practice at the department of pediatrics. I’ve seen many cases when genetic tests are needed (a strange haemophilia-related case, hereditary spherocytosis, etc.). I thought I should be your aggregator for today, so I tried to collect the most interesting posts on genetic testing, and I also present a new genetic blog. Then after reading all of these, don’t miss the funny video about a parody of a public service announcement on genetic testing.
Medicine 2.0 means that you can read valuable comments and opinions which are unlikely to be published in a scientific paper. Hsien-Hsien Lei greatly answers common questions about genetic testing.
Steven Murphy, the Gene Sherpa always informs us about new techniques and procedures that make it easier to diagnose (genetic) conditions and to predict risks for diseases. This time, in his article No More Skin Biopsies?, he says, it does demonstrate how ubiquitous genetic soon will be in the office.
Blaine Bettinger, our favourite genetic genealogist, describes the pros and cons of autosomal genetic testing. He says, no autosomal test, now or in the future, will ever be able to completely define a person or a person’s heritage. The solution could be the easy and fast whole genome sequencing. We hope it’s going to be reality soon.
After writing my Awesome Genetic Announcements post, Cicada from bioephemera.com asked me to express my opinion about how we can handle untreatable disorders (such as early-onset Alzheimers, or bipolar disorder) and whether one’s genetic risks could lead to being uninsured and unemployed.
- We don’t have to handle those. In a personalized genetic practice, an easy solution could be that the patient chooses from a list that what kind of diseases, conditions, genes they want to know about.
- For answering the second question, I just have to show you the winner of the post of the week award: Medical Ethics 2.0 from The Personal Genome. This post will really answer everything regarding medical ethics and insurance problems.
As I’ve promised, here is a new blog on the sky of the genetic blogosphere, Cancer Genetics. Ramūnas Janavičius, a clinical genetics resident doctor from Vilnius University, Lithuania, who is interested in human cancer genetics. He thinks that we help his work, but the truth is that he does a great service for us and the readers for writing about cancer genetics (an awesome topic!). Follow his blog in the future!
At last, let’s have some fun (actually it’s not as funny as you think):
Next time, I’m going to write about my conception on what a personalized genetic practice is like.
Related links:
- Towards a World without Genetic Diseases
- Awesome Genetic Announcements
- Genetic Breakthroughs for Today
- PTC124, a Drug Against Genetic Diseases: Overview
- News of genetics: let’s beat genetic diseases!
