If one day they do file a newborns potential illnesses, they could approach it with a preventative wellness plan.

Maybe taking a pro-active approach cost a little more but a persons quality of life could be optimal.

Than we can factor in who's going to have a healthy lifestyle and who is going to be lazy. Who's going to party all night and who's going to sleep. Who's going to be abused and who isn't. Why, we'll know everything everybody is going to need thier entire life and can plan accordingly.

It is great they can conquor this aspect but we forget to use prevention which is 85% of our degenerative diseases due to bad lifestyles and a toxic agricultural processed fast food society that creates obesity and the diabetes, heart problems, and asthma to mention a few. It is too bad we did not have more R & D for green breakthroughs in clean energy which would get us off of fossil fuels that drains lives and billions for the military industrial complex that could redirect our treasury towards a just sustainable future for our children. Do this with long term incentives like twenty years and the capital venture money would flow into clean energy like it did with bio and information technology. Gosh maybe people would be benefited from less pollution that makes people sick. Prevention, prevention, prevention.

Are forgetting that if they pass this pile of poop health care bill, this research might not be available because there might not be any funding? I don't know just what will be affected but it is government run its crap game isn't it. As always just my opinion.

This would give the government healthcare the ability to pinpoint any disease you might have that could cost them long-term care so they could deny you any help immediately since this bill already says "limited care" for anyone needing long term healthcare. Then, too, since they don't want to pay for much of anything who would get stuck with paying $50,000 a head to have the genetic work done?

Research will come to a grinding halt if they get this healthcare bill done. After all, who's going to pay for it and what's the use when we won't be able to get the benefits? Gov. Healthcare should reduce the lifespan of our population back down to 65 so they won't have to pay Social Security. That is why they set that age to start with - because back when it was set up people didn't live much past 65.

Research will NOT come to a grinding halt.

Biochemical research is a worldwide phenomenon.

Dolly the sheep was cloned in Scotland, not the US - yet it appeared in every US newspaper. And the peer-revieweed journal artricles are available (in several languages at this point) on-line all over the world.

More importantly, genetic sequencing at birth will only predict congenital predispositions.

Cancer is almost always due to ACQUIRED mutations. Things like cigarette smoking induce mutations that can lead to cancer. The mutations weren't there at birth, and thus won't show up in a newborn's genetic screening.

This is fascinating, this genome project, and ending these horrible diseases is a most worthy goal. But 100 million for a failed research test? No wonder some medications are $100/pill. Now they've been able to map the genome of sick people for $50,000, much better, saying they've done some shortcuts. I really hope they have success this time around. And if they are saying that genes that cause illness are rare, then I wonder why there is so much illness?

I hope genome sequencing is everything and does everything we think it is capable of.

I fear the same thing that happened with climate control will happen with this.

We really need more discipline in the scientific community.

Why play God's games? Who wants to live forever...Go ahead ask those jobless people and most of the general public...how many of you prefer to pro-long your lives to live forever in rhis choas world....when is the Judgements Day?

Judgment Day due to lazy lifestyles and easy inaction. I prefer to be optimistic and be a good steward of God's creation or whatever you want to call it. I hope if a heaven I do not have to be around such people.

The first one cost 500 million 10 years before. The point the article was making is, that the technology has improved and it's far less costly then it was 10 years prior, in 10 more years how much should it cost----50?

I agree, a cure or a way to prevent cancer is something the world needs.

A great part of the President's health agenda, has always been living healthy and prevention.

More common diseases, like cancer, are thought to be caused by mutations in several genes, and finding the causes was the principal goal of the $3 billion human genome project.

So let me get this straight.... We paid 3 Billion for What? And what are they doing?

The Human Genome Project has more than paid for itself - not in the genetic information, but in the development of tangential technologies. (Much the way the space race led to miniturization of electronics and the explosion in computer science.)

Those SNPchips the article mentions are a great example of this. They developed a glass slide (like microscope slides) that have thousands and thousands of single standed nucleotides bonded to them. A sample of cellular DNA (or RNA) can be washed over the slide, and any DNA sequences that match those on the slide bind to the slide. Now what is on the slide is a mixture of some single-standed nucleotides (those originally bonded to the slide) and double-stranded nucleotides (those from the sample that had compimentary sequences). The double stranded ones will bind to fluorescent dyes. Now the double stranded ones are identified by what is essentially a DVD reader. This enables the screening of tens of thousands of genes in almost no time. It is an incredible technology.

This alone may be worth the $3 billion investment.

My point is that when I'm given a project with a "Primary Goal", that is what I work on.

I don't doubt that the discovered technology is tremendous however, could they have not found this incredible technology working on the primary goal.

I looked up the other diseases, and they seem to be fairly rare, and not, as the article mentions, "More common diseases like cancer".

Don't get me wrong, these other diseases appear to be very dibilitating, but the various forms of cancer wreak havoc on the people affected, and many more people are affected by and die of cancer.

Look, I'm not trying to belittle the findings, all I'm saying is FOCUS on the primary goal.

Allen, the primary goal was to sequence the entire human genome. This was accomplished - years ahead of schedule and way, way UNDER BUDGET.

More common diseases, like cancer, are thought to be caused by mutations in several genes, and finding the causes was the principal goal of the $3 billion human genome project.

I pasted it from the article in my first posting. I'll paste it here again so that you can READ it this time. So did the article make up that story about the principle goal of the human genome project?

Allen, the article's author is wrong.

I've been a research biochemist for 27 years.

The primary goal of the Human Genome Project was to sequence the human genome - hence the name.

What if there was an easy, simple cure for cancer from a natural plant material? What if that cure was made illegal and there was a constant and intense propaganda campaign telling us that the cure was really a dangerous that deadly drug?

What if there was an entire industry dedicated to treating people with cancer using hideously painful, expensive and largely ineffective methods that did not actually cure the illness but put people through hell, drained their bank accounts and then they died anyway? Maybe that's just one of those crazy conspiracy theories?

The government never lies to us though. I mean, if you can't trust a politician, who can you trust?

Go to Google Video and watch: "Run From The Cure - The Rick Simpson Story".

LDA I think you are way, way off base.

However, it would not surprise me if the Army did sequence your CMPT1 gene to screen for pain tollerance. That would be useful information to them, and easily obtained.

Cloning you? Nah. Not worth the exspense. You do realize, don't you, that the clone would be born as an infant, and they'd have to raise him for 18 years?

yup! comming soon to a generation near you...

the perfect man and woman, soldier, the smartest human ever to live, and so on. kinda fewaky if you ask me, how syfy, makes its way into what one thought was fantasy, becomes real.

Star Trek a good exsample. not only a corner stone for most movies of science fiction, yet the things they too thought were only fantasy, and perhaps an idea of how things could be in a fantastic future, now we see in most part, every day. from the 2way communicator (cell phone) to space travel, refering to a story from popular science regaurding a ship the US built, that is possibly able to do warp speed, yet doesnt have the hull it needs to prevent even a particle of space dust from penetrating. Teleportation,http://dgl.com/itinfo/2002/it020401.html , talking computers with AI, and so on.

Not that i am against progress, as long as i understand it isnt falling into the wrong hands. The one where a planet uses no form of birth control, and the people live forever, is possibly the future of mankind with the new strides being taken. Next it might be the ageing gnome, and a way to prevent growing old.... i dont know it will happen, and you dont know it wont.

Dear Megalodon-358694 On Progress and Faith: It was Lister who gave us the mantra, "Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands!" Prior to that, surgeons wiped their hands and scalpels on their pants legs. Pasteur led us to heat sterilization to kill bacteria. Penicillin was not such a bad idea, either. If you were as old as I am, you would recall having your foot soaked in turpentine if you stepped on a nail: essentially there were NO effective medications prior to 1940. Oh, yes: then there are vaccines. Small pox, polio, measles, diptheria, to name a few. Faith? That the Human Mind use information to the good. So--who is to know if information is, or is not, falling into the Wrong Hands?

As a physician once told me, "If they found a cure for your disease, what would I do for a living".

Insurance, healthcare and pharmaceutical companies and the government make a kings ransom from the suffering of others. This is one of the reasons that the republicans and their constituents (insurance, healthcare and pharmaceutical companies) do not won't to change the status quo. It's a shame the people of the United States of America and the other countries of the world are so stupid that they can't figure this out.

I will...Ha...

Every time a cell divides the entire genome must be copied - all billion or so bases. Even and incredibly good replication system, with an extraordinarily low error rate, will cause a few mistakes (mutations) in each new cell. Multiply that by the number of cells and by the number of times each divides throughout your life, and BINGO....

No added issues needed. Error will accumulate even in the perfect world.