Whoa Baby, Genomics Ain't That Good

Typical media hype about having your genome mapped and getting boutique care that’s personalized.
Every one wants either a good palm reader or a physician who knows everything. Magical thinking promoted by the companies that brought you the magical Genome project.

Talk about mumbo jumbo. Mapping the genome is a chemical exercise and we have the tech to mapp the genome, BUT, we don’t know how it works. This media release is a bit premature.
This is delusional, we know some alleles, loci, codons that can be determinative on some characteristics of the subject, or cause disease or birth defects or inherited problems, but we have no clue to how the genome really works, particularly on complex things.
Mapping projects identify and compare base pair sequences that comprise the basic code (just like computer code) but the mechanism of how the genome works is not known and we are a long way from understanding how the genome works.
Knowing the chemical sequencing comes no where close to knowing functionality and interactions of the how the thing works.
Bill Gates was right when he said it appears that the genome is a very complex thing.
Genomic research has been particularly stumped by the inactive sections of genes and the obvious interactive characteristics of the sections of the genome–the genome is not a straight one to one chemical code with one to one effects.
http://www.grandhaventribune.com/article/800311

4 thoughts on “Whoa Baby, Genomics Ain't That Good”

  1. Both questions ignore the fact that it serves a function now. The biggest flaw in macro evolutionists is the tendency to tell presumptive narratives as fact. Weaving a complicated story that logically connects widely dissociated facts is a common tactic among conspiracy theorists as well.

  2. Ah, vestigial organs. If you follow the natural selection/evolution meme as “proven science” (ala climate science versus a model which show validity on the micro-evolutionary scale) then I would challenge with this question: Is the appendix a vestigial organ that had a use in the past but does not serve a purpose now OR is it a new organ evolving that will serve a role in the future?

  3. The “inactive sections of genes” line has always reminded me of Robert Wiedersheim’s infamous vestigial organs list. Science has a long history of declaring definitively that if they don’t know what something does, it must not do anything. I think the Human Genome Project’s big “we’ve done it” announcement had more to do with flagging interest and funding than any actual revelation as to the deep inner workings of the genetic code. No matter what branch of research you’re in, if you take enough money for a long enough time, someone is going to want some results. The rest is just a natural extension of the “early detection” marketing scheme that’s made so much money for the cholesterol pill pushers and their ilk.

  4. There were long standing traditions in two of my genealogical lines of American Indian ancestors. Better than a certain Senator, I have family histories naming names. Ancestry’s DNA test blew those traditions out of the water. Either that or my parents took the wrong baby home. That’s about all the utility I’ve seen from these tests and I wouldn’t have used this test if one of my kids hadn’t gotten the genealogy bug and sent me the test.
    Besides, if DNA testing could accurately predict that you would get something like ALS or acute myeloid leukemia, would you really want to know?

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