Big surprise - genetics is of little use in developing personalized medicine

A recent article (cite below) noted that studies attempting to start developing personalized medical treatment through genetics had disappointingly revealed very few diseases have a genetic components that correlate for risk of getting the disease.  This is a big disappointment in the scientific world.   For as long as I can remember Science has been committed to the nature v. nurture theory - the notion that everything we are is either the product of our DNA, or our upbringing.  Nature v. nurture never did a great job of explaining variations in human personality, but it provided a ready battle ground for the hard sciences to square off against social scientists.  Neither side was open to complicating the argument by adding another influence.


As a reasonably well informed spectator to the debate it has been apparent to me there is probably a third influence rooted in brain chemistry.  Science has known for decades that the chemicals the different systems in our brain use to communicate are not static.  The particular mix of chemicals changes constantly during the course of a day, a month and a year, and the changes are pretty predictable in many cases, as are behavioral changes that reflect the particular mix of chemicals.  The problem with this theory is a PR problem.  It sounds like Astrology - your personality is affected by the physical world around you, and in particular by when you were born.

My perception of why we have made no progress on the nature v. nurture issue in my adult lifetime is science has shied away from studying the issue first because they feared being associated with astrology, then, as "fear" of astrology receded, the chemical approach to brain science got pushed aside by new digital imaging technology that cannot measure different chemicals very well.  What is important is we are now  30 years down the road and science has run into another dead end in the decade long effort  to explain everything through DNA or nurture.

Responding to a comment to a blog I posted on this topic on  9/22/2011 I said:

I think, for example, medicine would be a huge beneficiary. Treating each person as different (instead of assuming we are all chemical carbon copies) is all the rage in medicine but they have no organizing principal to focus their research. Any good "serious" astrology book will discuss ailments characteristics of certain signs, and in my lifetime looking at myself and people I know those astrological traditions have a high degree of predictive accuracy.

I know the theory sounds wacky to people - particularly science folk - because in some ways it is a science based theory that in some ways sort of invites dipping into the data base in astrology - and the ancient folk that developed astrology know nothing about the brain, or chemistry.  But probably the first time someone said the earth revolved around the sun it sounded wacky, and the first person who drew the conclusion probably knew nothing about the solar system, or galaxy or  universe.  Conventional wisdom often closes our mind to possibilities.  


Now we can search the center of the universe billions of light years away with our telescopes, we can build computers that sit on our desks that can store, manage and process data far faster than we can - but we still can't come to grips with why we aren't all clones of one another.  Science needs to get over its simple notion that everything is based in either DNA or nurture and start investigating other options.


If you are reading this blog and know someone who is in, or thinking about being in, the brain or medical research fields, forward this blog.  Please.  I kept it short so it won't be to painful to read.  I'm getting old.  I want my doctors to be able to understand why I am different from the patient they saw before me.


1 - May 5 Science News, p.11 - reporting on papers presented at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

This phrase from the Declaration of Independence has been widely cited in my lifetime as the essence of what freedom in the United States is all about.  It seems to me we all should contemplate this phrase from the declaration of independence when deciding on the proper role of Government.


There is an inherent tension in applying the phrase to an entire country  - what if my pursuit of happiness impinges on the life, liberty or happiness of some other person?  So a fundamental assumption that precedes all government action should be that Government has no power over individual behavior until individual behavior starts impinging on others.  The more direct the impact on others, the more power government has to control behavior.


Many of our current laws don't meet this standard.  Drug use is a primary example of conduct that is almost entirely personal.  If I decide I want to spend my life sitting on my porch smoking marijuana I raise in my backyard, my conduct has no direct impact on anyone else.  But as a society we seem to have great difficulty accepting that freedom must include the freedom to make dumb personal decisions.  So for nearly a century we have waged a war on marijuana consumption that has had little discernible impact on consumption but has taken an enormous toll in money and disruption of peoples lives. 


We tend to err in the other direction with economics and commerce.  Virtually no economic activity takes place that doesn't involve people interacting.  If you go up on the hillside and chop down some tree's there are fewer tree's available for the other residents of the community.   If you manufacture, you need workers, retail requires customers.  Economics should be an area of life where government is actively mediating between competing interests, but our history has been a long struggle between those seeking to find a proper balance of regulation and market anarchists who believe government should stay out of economic affairs.