I lost my Train....

So last week I asked the question. "Where would we be if we had a 1000 USD genome by next year?"....But more importantly I asked "Who would lose if we had a 1000 USD genome by next year?"

So who would lose?

I am having a hard time coming up with these. I think they tend to breakdown into several groups

1) The group who benefits from not being able to target medicines and diagnoses.

2) The group who would is scared to know what the secret of the genome holds

3) The group not nimble enough to change their practices and adopt new technologies

4) The group whose genomes hold some horrible secrets and disadvantages that have previously gone undetected

5) Those who I have left out, the unknown unknowns

So let's address one at a time

First up.....Who benefits from trial and error medicine? Who benefits from not having cheap genome sequencing

1 Big Pharma.....buy the drug.....doesn't work......buy another and another and another

2 Hospitals.....Chest Pain?????.......Admit to rule out heart attack........Chest Pain Again????.....Admit and repeat the process again..... To a certain extent this is true.

3 Device Makers........Obesity????.....Have a LapBand..........Funny Heart Beat?????.....Have a pacemaker. We are talking thousands of dollars per device people!!!

4. Knome....(Sorry George)

5 Patented genetic tests.....

6 Not the SNP people....their products now are merely the entry level players....They will switch to whole genomes ASAP....Trust me.

Can you think of others? I bet you can.....So who are they?

The Sherpa Says:

This is how we need to think about the barriers and how to break them down. We need to show who loses how they can win. Then we get them invested in the process. That is what the Wall Street Journal Article is all about.