Overselling Genomics, Sherpa Plan part 1

Yes finally, at last I am going to release my Sherpa Plan!

Thank you to all who have helped form this unique set of operating instructions to help rescue the promise of personalized medicine.

Now to Problem Number One....

Lack of Public and Physician Education by qualified sources.

How many people have heard of NCHPEG? I have, they are the National Coalition for Healthcare Professional Education in Genetics and they are a fantastic resource. But.

Well, my team took a poll (non-scientific) of 100 primary care physicians........how many do you think have heard of this organization............6 and they all had spoken with a geneticist in the last 2 months. In other surveys, physicians state that they rely on the same media that patients do to receive information about genetics. That's just not right!

Friends......we have a big problem when the people who are supposed to be implementing genetics get their information from an unreliable news media. Why are they unreliable? They like everyone else are expected to do more with less.....thus fact checking has become a thing of the past........

So therefore, if physicians are going to use the Sunday Times as their information, then we are going to fact check it ourselves......

Together with Drew Y, we are creating a community to fact check genetics reporting. It is called HelixGene Foundation......Thursday we will have sent an email to over 1000 genetics professionals inviting them to join our community.....

Attention Media and Public Relations! You are now forewarned.....We will keep grades on all of you and post them so that the public and physicians who are reading your articles are given the courtesy of Peer Review!

Want to join our community? You need to verify your PhD, MD, or CGC credentials and then we will sign you up.

The Sherpa Says: If we can control the accuracy of information, we will avoid overselling genomics. Why is this important? To prevent articles, like the one of Dr Khoury in the NEJM essentially bashing SNP scans. The problem? PMDs viewed that article as marginalizing the whole field of personalized medicine. Not just the SNP scan! Trust me Dr Khoury, we need more than a treadmill to carry out personalized medicine.