Love my readers!

The other day I was flooded with emails from my readers about my post about the whole genome scan dirty little secret. Some agreed with me others vociferously defended the need for "further study" But the best was an email from someone who worked for one of the big scan companies, can't say which one, can't say who.

I Quote

"The speculative questions that you ask about interpreting whole genome sequencing indirectly relates to exactly what the cyclical problem is with an industry of genomic researchers who don’t practice science. Instead, they practice following the recommendations and protocols developed by instrumentation vendors, as if Mike Hunkapillar, Sue Siegel, and Jay Flatley had once parted the Red Sea"

I tend to agree that this comes down to a question of thought leaders in the field. This reminds me to the initial flack received by David Goldstein and even the Ire by Kari Stefansson expressed towards David. But then others soon stepped up and voiced their concerns here. The same thing happened when I expressed concern and reminded everyone about the laws that exist for DTC testing...

Why as a field, does genetic have this lack of willingness to challenge? I think it is for a fear that the spotlight which now shines so brightly will be dimmed because of controversy.

I disagree. Controversy is what will make this field the most robust, the best press worthy and most exciting field of "everything" for the next century.

Let's face it, there is no way that the lights will dim on Genomics. The real question is what will be the representative face of the field. Right now, it is all hype and iPhones and California Silicon Valley.........

I await to see its next face.

Maybe it will be Moses?

The Sherpa Says: It all comes down to the fact that there are so many more data points to look at than just the genome.......