By Lee Rowen Every once in a while, different components of a research problem come together at just the right time. One lives for, and savors, these occasions. One of my favorite examples is the discovery of the genetic variant that causes hereditary pancreatitis. Hereditary pancreatitis (HP) causes painful attacks of the gut, often beginning in childhood. Over time, the pain and damage can become chronic and there is an…
Our president, Dr. Leroy Hood, is featured in this Genome Technology article about the challenges of moving personalized medicine into the clinic. (The cover image features Dr. Eric Topol, who recently published a book called "The Creative Destruction of Medicine.")
By Jeremy Johnson I used to feel a hopelessness about modern healthcare. We would talk in circles about how some people would get the care they needed, others would not, and that was the way of the world. Being what the insurance company calls a “young and healthy,” I had the luxury of watching the game unfold, but I didn’t have anything personal at stake. Then, a few Novembers back,…
By Lee Rowen In February of 2001 I headed off to Washington DC to participate in an extravagant celebration of scientific achievement. Preliminary drafts of the human genome’s DNA sequence were being published in Nature and Science magazines, and those of us who’d spent years immersed in the Human Genome Project were ready to exult, for one precious weekend, before spending yet more years finishing the sequence to high quality….
