National Public Radio reports on the dilemmas of deciding whether or not to sequence a baby's entire genome -- it can be done, and will get cheaper as time passes.
There are things about my own genome that I'd rather not know. Do I have a predisposition for Alzheimer's? I hope not, but I'd rather not know that, I guess. Or at least I would have rather not know that when I was a thirty-year-old.
Knowledge is a wonderful thing, but it always brings more responsibility. Perhaps we should never sequence anybody's genome, unless there is a compelling medical, judicial or scientific reason for doing so.
Thanks for reading. Read the article.
Musings on science, the Bible, and fantastic literature (and sometimes basketball and other stuff).
God speaks to us through the Bible and the findings of science, and we should listen to both types of revelation.
The title is from Psalm 84:11.
The Wikipedia is usually a pretty good reference. I mostly use the World English Bible (WEB), because it is public domain. I am grateful.
License
I have written an e-book, Does the Bible Really Say That?, which is free to anyone. To download that book, in several formats, go here.
The posts in this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You can copy and use this material, as long as you aren't making money from it. If you give me credit, thanks. If not, OK.
The posts in this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You can copy and use this material, as long as you aren't making money from it. If you give me credit, thanks. If not, OK.
Showing posts with label gene sequencing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gene sequencing. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 04, 2012
Wednesday, October 03, 2012
Sunspots 386
Humor: (I know -- it's not funny at all) You
probably don't wonder why women have so much more difficulty finding things that fit them than men do, but, if you do wonder, it's because women's
sizes are anything but standard. (From the New York Times.)
Science: (not Science Fiction) Fox News
reports that scientists are working
on a real warp drive, which drive was popularized in the Star
Trek TV series (all of them) and the Star Trek movies.
The cost of sequencing a person's genes is getting
affordable, less than $5,000, and going down. National Public Radio reports
that this has promise, and raises numerous ethical questions. Also practical ones -- will your doctor be able to interpret the results and
explain them to you?
The Arts: The trailer
for the soon-to-be-released Hobbit film.
Politics: National Public Radio has done a graphic
analysis of candidate Romney's 47 percent who don't pay income
taxes, showing why they don't.
(or Christianity) The Christian Post reports
that an Egyptian man is to be put on trial for tearing out pages of the Bible. The blog that pointed me to this says that Christians should
protest this arrest and trial. I agree. We should protest this.
Computing: (Or Education) National Public Radio reports on Coursera, which offers free on-line education, high quality education.
Christianity: "This God of rough edges will not be
smoothed out, neither by the fundamentalists who think he is mainly interested in populating hell, nor the liberals who imagine hell is
empty." Mark Galli, reviewing the movie, Hellbound?, for
Christianity Today.
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