A newly released Wellcome Trust study has found the genetic markers for diseases such as "depression, Crohn's disease, coronary heart disease, hypertension, rheumatoid arthritis, and type 1 and 2 diabetes." With new statistical analysis tools, they compared the DNA of thousands of people with and without the diseases' manifest symptoms and have pinpointed the actual genes that can show at birth how prone a person is or is not to developing these inherited diseases later in life.
This is all fantastic and wonderful and, as the BBC article quotes one doctor, "...should enable scientists to understand better how disease occurs, which people are most at risk and, in time, to produce more effective, more personalised treatments."
However, it will not be long before this information on individuals will start to inform the private health care industry's decision-making process.
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