Books written 2 months ago already out of date...web is a better source of up to the minute information...and the possibility to have this information available and help take some of the guess work out of diagnosing is amazing...and it's moving fast...the answers are and will be in the genes..BD
Next week, scientists from around the world will fly into Philadelphia to attend a two-day conference starting on March 18. If, 20 years ago, you had told any one of them what the conference would be about, chances are none of them would have believed you. The subject is genetic science -- wild, rollicking, surprise-a-month genetic science. The kind that is churning out earth-shattering discoveries so fast that it's making medical textbooks, even some printed just two months before, out of date.
"The way we give medicine today will be considered the dark ages," he said. "What we are seeing right now, in the past year, is more breakthroughs in understanding the pathways of disease and health than we have had in many decades." What prompts most of them to use language such as "spectacular," "earth-shaking" and "revolutionary" is that their discoveries today are likely to completely alter medical care in the very near future. And change lives.....but most agree it will likely be within 20 years -- you will go into your doctor's office and, from a swab of your cheek, your doctor will get a readout of your entire genome.
If you're a diabetic and you have a particular kind of gene, or a mutation of another kind of gene, your body won't respond to Medicine A. It will respond to Medicine B. Or to a medicine yet to be developed. And it might be that a low-fat diet won't help you at all but it will do wonders for the diabetic next-door. Your genes will guide you, Collins said. "Science provides knowledge," he said. "Knowledge doesn't have moral value, it's not good or evil, it's just information. It's what you decide to do with it that carries benefits or harms. Scientists are extremely excited right now about the ability to push this envelope faster than we ever have. But society has to get engaged as well, to figure out what are the right balances here between benefits and risks so that ultimately we do the most good."
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