I was away for Thanksgiving with family in chilly Seattle. I returned to find 174 comments awaiting moderation. Sadly, all 174 were spam, offering me the usual prescription-drugs-without-prescription, Rolex copies, Prada knockoffs, and a heaping helping of pornography (bestiality has been popular lately). This is pretty much par for the course. Whenever I see one of your real, thoughtful comments about something that’s been posted here, my heart soars.

I envy some of those other blogs—mostly political—where a single, not-terribly-profound posting can elicit hundreds of comments.

Ah well. Pharmacogenetics and genomic medicine are alive and well. See, for example, the Web site for the Guilford Genomic Medicine Initiative. The Guilford project [Guilford is a county in North Carolina] is funded by the Department of Defense to the tune of $10 million over three years. The Guilford project will concentrate on breast and ovarian cancer, colon cancer, and thrombotic disorders. Their mission statement says that a major aim of the project is to “ensure that the information provided through genetic testing is clearly communicated by health professionals and understood by individuals receiving their genetic information.”

The project will seek to identify individuals with genetic risk for the named conditions. Apparently at a later phase, the project will include pharmacogenetic testing for medication response.

Technorati Tags: pharmacogenetics, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, colon cancer, thrombosis, North Carolina, Guilford Genomic Medicine Initiative, Department of Defense

This entry was posted on Monday, November 27th, 2006 at 12:16 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.