The Raelian Movement
for those who are not afraid of the future : http://www.rael.org
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Hunting the missing health link
http://www.physorg.com/news205481968.html
October 5, 2010 By Alvin Powell
Thomas W. Smith Professor of Medicine Christine Seidman (in red) and
Associate Professor of Medicine Elizabeth Karlson (far right),
co-authors of a study called OurGenes, OurHealth, OurCommunity,
eventually want to enroll 100,000 patients in a lengthy, longitudinal
study of the causes of illness, which could help link genetic
background to lifestyle and environmental factors. Jon Chase
Researchers at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital and
Harvard Medical School have embarked on an ambitious study of the link
among genetics, lifestyle, environment, and health that organizers
hope will set the stage for a new generation of personalized disease
analysis and medical care.
The study, called OurGenes, OurHealth, OurCommunity, eventually wants
to enroll 100,000 patients in a lengthy, longitudinal study of the
causes of illness that could help link genetic background to lifestyle
and environmental factors.
The study stands on three key parts: patients' health backgrounds,
which are provided to researchers through existing health records,
family histories, and medical questionnaires; their genetic profiles,
which are provided through blood samples; and their health futures,
which are mapped through access to clinical data as it accumulates.
Christine Seidman, the study's co-principal investigator, the Thomas
W. Smith Professor of Medicine and professor of genetics at Harvard
Medical School, and director of the Brigham's Cardiovascular Genetics
Center, said she views the study as a community effort in which
Brigham medical workers and patients come together to help realize the
promise of advances that have been made in recent years in
understanding genes.
The study, which is in an initial, yearlong pilot phase, is enrolling
patients at six Brigham-affiliated sites. Because of the consent,
family history, and questionnaire process, she said the OurGenes staff
is using the trial period to ensure that data gathering does not
interfere with the clinical purpose of patient visits and also to make
sure the enrollment process itself is capturing the diversity of
patients.
So far, Seidman said, about 100 people have enrolled in the study. The
participation rate is about 70 percent of those approached and asked
if they're interested. Instead of waiting for patients to come to the
hospitals or clinics, Seidman said, patients with appointments are
mailed information a couple of weeks in advance of their appointments
so they are aware of the study before being asked to participate. The
information that is collected will be kept private.
Seidman said healthy patients are as important to the study as people
with medical conditions. Those with one condition can be part of a
control population for studies that look at others. "If you're
perfectly healthy, you're as valuable to us as someone with a
devastating condition," Seidman said. "We all have risk for some
disease and less risk for others."
Seidman sees the study as long running, since it will take years to
get the patient population enrolled, and the plan is to follow
patients through time and monitor health outcomes. The study will
gather information on topics as diverse as patients' smoking history,
their exercise practices, sun exposure, and even where they grew up.
Examples of questions that researchers are hoping to answer include
whether specific genes, in combination with certain lifestyle or
environmental factors, lead to greater health risks and whether
certain drugs lead to adverse reactions in patients with specific
genetic profiles. Though the study was launched only in June,
researchers are already expressing interest in identifying a patient
population that is taking statins, the popular cholesterol-lowering
drug.
The accumulated health data, when combined with stored blood samples
for genetic analysis, will also aid future researchers, who will be
able to begin studies quickly and more efficiently than if they had to
begin recruiting subjects from scratch, Seidman said.
Though other studies have been conducted examining the genetic
background of disease, most of those have been aimed at specific
ailments, specific populations, or specific genes. OurGenes is one of
the first to examine such a large, diverse population for broad health
and genetic trends.
Provided by Harvard University
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"Ethics" is simply a last-gasp attempt by deist conservatives and
orthodox dogmatics to keep humanity in ignorance and obscurantism,
through the well tried fermentation of fear, the fear of science and
new technologies.
There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history,
it is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.
On the contrary, let us embrace Science and the new technologies
unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the
myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease,
death and the sweat of labour.
Rael
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