There is a recent story in the New York Times entitled Insurance Fears Lead Many to Shun DNA Tests about how people are paying for their own genetic tests to avoid divulging that information to their insurance companies and doctors for fear that it may prevent them from getting coverage in the future. As the article mentions, this is not only a concern for individuals, but also for researchers. Human consent and institutional approval processes... Full Post
I mentioned Pacific Biosciences in my first post about AGBT 2008. A faithful reader pointed me to this article in the New York Times entitled The Race to Read Genomes on a Shoestring, Relatively Speaking. It discusses PacBio and has a quote from Elaine Mardis. Full Post
If you are interested in learning more about the next-generation sequencing technologies, i.e., 454, Solexa (Illumina), and AB SOLiD, you can get a quick overview from a recent article by Elaine Mardis in Trends in Genetics entitled The impact of next-generation sequencing technology on genetics. There is also a companion paper focusing on the ramifications of next-generation sequencing on informatics by Mihai Pop and Steven Salzberg entitled Bioinformatics challenges of new sequencing technology. Full Post
Sen. Obama should stick by his pledge to use public funding for the general election if Sen. McCain does the same on the Republican side. He is right, however, to proceed with caution. Sens. McCain and Clinton are criticizing Sen. Obama for what they see as switching positions. They should know better. They all saw what was done without any campaign money in 2004: swiftboating. Any agreement to limit spending must be given careful consideration.... Full Post
Lawrence Lessig, Law professor at Stanford, is considering running for Congress. The Congressional seat for his district is open due to the unfortunate recent passing of Congressman Tom Lantos (who had recently announced his retirement). He is currently working on starting a Change Congress movement to push further ethics and lobbying reform and is trying to decide whether running for Congress fits with that goal. Full Post