GENETICS BY NUMBERS

"Who would of ever though that the future of human health would be read like lists of car number plates," is the opening line in the article Genetics by Numbers. It is a good question. What would it be like when our can predetermine our health. It is scary to think of what the world would be like with that kind of personal health information just floating around for the public to see. Will we be labelled by our genes? Will we be marked by the numbers and letters that have predetermined what our body will do? At first glance this seems to look like an answer for early diagnosis, but what do you do with the diagnosis is the good question? How would you share it with your spouse, what if your children are marked? There seems to be many issues with this, but it is needless to say that early diagnosis also means early treatment and who wouldn't want that?

The problem is that it is just a little out of reach with the current technology. It's making good progress, but this is not something easy to do. SNP research is costly and requires a large amount of data as well as a large amount of people to put the data together. This is no easy task and is improbable for individuals to do. This is why there needs to be a collaboration among no just individuals, but countries to come together and combine all the data into a public data bank. This is the only way to make major advancements in this field. But how do you make the world put away selfish gain for the sake of science?
There is no doubt a lot of corruption within the scientific community. Why should this not be expected in a world of self gain, competition and greed dominated mind sets? However, this is not to say that there are not those out there that do not follow this selfish stream and it is definitely not to say that this competition hasn't been the driving force to push research ahead. A healthy dose of competitive action is just what word needs to keep the great minds going. The problem comes with the phrase two heads are better than one. In this case is thousands of heads are better than one. This is more than true in our society today where scientific advances are at the breaking point of many great discoveries. Imagen the greatness that awaits the world upon the joining of each nation's greatest minds - all of the question that could be answered, all of the pieces that will come together.  However, the system is so knee deep in the dirty waters of politics, private businesses and gain that the powerful knowledge of SNPs is surely to be abused.

I am sure that there are those who are willing to join together for the benefits of SNP research. I think the idea of unlocking the knowledge of SNPs and what it can do for humanity will be enough to join those who care. As for the ones who are over come with greed, there is nothing but money and gain that will change them. For the world to come together is very unlikely. Logically speaking, I don't think it will never happen.