Blog Comments

Kinetica Online is pleased to provide direct links to commentaries from our senior editor Dr. Steven Pelech has posted on other blogs sites. Most of these comments appear on the GenomeWeb Daily Scan website, which in turn highlight interesting blogs that have been posted at numerous sites in the blogosphere since the beginning of 2010. A wide variety of topical subjects are covered ranging from the latest scientific breakthroughs, research trends, politics and career advice. The original blogs and Dr. Pelech’s comments are summarized here under the title of the original blog. Should viewers wish to add to these discussions, they should add their comments at the original blog sites.

The views expressed by Dr. Pelech do not necessarily reflect those of the other management and staff at Kinexus Bioinformatics Corporation. However, we wish to encourage healthy debate that might spur improvements in how biomedical research is supported and conducted.

Liability

Whole-Genome Liability

Bloggers Gary Marchant and Rachel Lindor from Future Tense suggested that as whole-genome sequencing becomes more common in the clinic, doctors may be facing the consequences of the technological shift, including the possibility of lawsuits if they do not recognize the significance of a variant or do not disclose medically relevant findings to patients' relatives. S. Pelech seriously doubts that with over 60 million SNP's and millions of positive and negative interactions between the proteins encoded by the ~23,000 genes in the human genome, physicians will be liable for not recognizing potential problems from genome-wide sequence data. The adoption of personalized medicine will probably mean that patients that rely on this technology will also have to accept more personal responsibility. Read More...