Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
Myriad elicits a genetics tempest
In his book Next , popular writer Michael Crichton created the evil biotechnology company BioGen that was sued by a man who lost ownership of his own cells during cancer treatments. After the court decided in BioGen’s favor, the company asserted its right to harvest his cell line, including those of his daughter and grandson.
Crichton, who also authored Jurassic Park , included an essay in Next titled “Stop Patenting Genes” in which he wrote, “When Myriad patented two breast cancer genes, they charged nearly three thousand dollars for the test, even though the cost to create a gene test is nothing like the cost to develop a drug.”
The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalised Medicine
Francis Collins was appointed director of the National Institutes of Health (equivalent of the Medical Research Council) by President Obama in August 2009. He is the Pete Seeger of molecular biology. When he has made a great discovery he writes a song about it. And the connection is not just a matter of uplifting songs: Collins is a geneticist, but his spiritual, emotional and political inheritance comes from Roosevelt’s New Deal (his parents worked with Eleanor Roosevelt), folk music and God, just as much as from Darwin, Mendel and Crick.
The cover of The Language of Life carries Obama’s endorsement: “His groundbreaking work has changed the very ways we consider our health and examine disease.” His is a brilliant appointment, albeit controversial among some scientists: Collins is the highest-profile scientist and public administrator who is also a proselytising Christian. His previous book, The Language of God, contains both the most concise exposition I have read on why evolution is demonstrable fact and a moving account of his religious conversion from early atheism to strong belief. This stance has brought him into conflict both with Richard Dawkins and with Christian groups in the US. But, as right-wing attacks on evolution and global warming science broaden into a generalised anti-science movement, Collins is an important figure – someone who can wrong-foot people who have polarised attitudes.
In his new book, he is here to tell us that the era of personalised genetic testing is nigh. No one could be a more authoritative messenger than Collins. He directed the Human Genome Project – a 15-year international collaborative programme to sequence the entire 3.1 billion-letter code of human DNA – from 1993 to its completion in 2003. Since then, genome sequencing has followed the trail blazed by computing power. A new major animal genome is sequenced every few months (recent acquisitions include the platypus, the zebra fish and the domestic cow) and there are now more than 1,000 bacterial genome sequences. There is an international race for human genomes to be sequenced at a cost of less than $1,000, and Collins believes this will be achieved within five to seven years. He is unlikely to be wrong.