News Items

Following up on a news item we reported in February (My Cortex Made Me Buy It), a recent medical study adds credence to the misplaced notion that expensive = effective.

Researchers asked study participants to rate the effectiveness of two pills allegedly designed to provide pain relief.  The subjects were told that one pill cost $2.50, while the other pill cost $0.10. Each subject was given a small electrical shock and asked to rate the effectiveness of each pill.  In truth, both pills were placebos (sugar pills).

For both pills, subjects perceived significant pain relief (a placebo effect). But with the $2.50 pill, perceived pain relief was 24 percentage points higher than for the $0.10 pill.

Let's hope this doesn't give pharma companies justification to raise prices...

This New York Times article nicely summarizes the complex issues facing patients considering a genetic test.  On one hand, genetic tests can help improve an individual's health care prospects.  On the other hand, there is considerable fear that the results from a genetic test could be used in a discriminatory way - resulting in the loss of health insurance, or even one's job.

While there have been few documented cases of actual discrimination by health care insurers or employers, the spectre of discrimination leads many to pay out of pocket for genetic tests and use fake identities to learn of their test results.

Illinois has a state law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of a genetic test, but similar legislation is currently lacking at the national level.  A bill to outlaw genetic discrimination, the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act (GINA), passed the U.S. House of Representatives in April of 2007 by a vote of 420-3, but has not yet made it to the Senate floor.  A legislative summary of the bill can be found here.

Researchers at the biotechnology company Novocell have published a report detailing the use of human embryonic stem cells to control diabetes in mice.  The report was published earlier this week in Nature Biotechnology.

In the laboratory, researchers directed the cells to become precursors of pancreatic beta cells, the cell type that is damaged in diabetes.  The precursor cells were then transplanted into mice, where they continued to develop, eventually becoming mature pancreas cells with the ability to control blood sugar levels.  This work provides firm proof-of-principle that such experiments could work in humans, though any clinical application is still years away.

Health officials have characterized the increasing prevalence of diabetes worldwide as an epidemic.  With over 20 million Americans suffering from diabetes – approximately 7% of the population – and 170 million worldwide, developing treatments or even cures for diabetics is a high research priority.

Want to enter a race with a first prize of $10 million?  All you have to do is develop a DNA sequencer that can churn out the complete DNA sequence of 100 people in 10 days – for $10,000 or less per person.

This is the prize being offered by the X Prize Foundation, the same foundation that awarded $10 million in 2004 to a privately funded group that successfully launched a reusable spacecraft into space.

The ability to learn about one’s genetic makeup in a cost-effective, fast, and reliable way is an important step towards “personalized medicine” – using genetic information as a tool to evaluate a person's individual risk for certain diseases, and even treatment strategies for those that are already sick.  Trying to uncover the many genes that confer risk for diseases like diabetes, cancer, and heart disease is currently a very active area of research.

While some experts put the timetable for the $10,000 genome 6 or more years away, some think it may be as close as three years.

In case you would like to enter, here is the official Archon Genomics X Prize Website.