Scientists are looking for 100,000 volunteers who are prepared to have their DNA sequenced and published online for anyone to look at. However although the participants will receive a full analysis of their DNA, anonymity isn\’t guaranteed.
The UK Personal Genome Project, who are running this are expecting that this will give a deeper understanding of conditions like Alzheimer\’s , simply by comparing the DNA of a healthy person and someone with the disease. Among other conditions and diseases hoped to benefit from this programme include diabetes and even cancer!
Hopefully with the analysis of over 100,000 human genomes it is hoped that it will advance our understanding further. Cancer used to be a disease, then advancement of science has allowed us to break up it up into different diseases by tissue, later into lots of sub-catergories based on the impacted genes, so now the term \’Cancer\’ is actually thousands of diseases.
However there are some who argue that this isn\’t ethically right on a number of levels, for example if one of the volunteers was to find out that they were at a higher risk of say, Alzheimer\’s some say that this isn\’t right as this may affect their quality of life.
Although even considering this project is expected to have a mostly positive outlook on the future of genetic research.
Hopefully with the analysis of over 100,000 human genomes it is hoped that it will advance our understanding further. Cancer used to be a disease, then advancement of science has allowed us to break up it up into different diseases by tissue, later into lots of sub-catergories based on the impacted genes, so now the term \’Cancer\’ is actually thousands of diseases.
However there are some who argue that this isn\’t ethically right on a number of levels, for example if one of the volunteers was to find out that they were at a higher risk of say, Alzheimer\’s some say that this isn\’t right as this may affect their quality of life.
Although even considering this project is expected to have a mostly positive outlook on the future of genetic research.