Genetic code cards

World-renowned researcher Dr. Louis Kunkel believes Americans will one day have their genetic code on cards they can carry to doctors and pharmacists. "They're coming very soon," said the professor of Pediatrics and of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. "The only thing that's holding it back is the ability to entirely sequence your DNA and mine. The technique to do that is really expensive." Kunkel received worldwide attention for his ground-breaking work on Duchenne muscular dystrophy. His newest research focuses on Americans surviving past 100, each of whom appears to have the same gene on chromosome 4 at a much greater rate than the general population. He hopes to use genetic cards with that group on a smaller scale. A genetic card could make it possible for physicians to prescribe the drugs that work best with a particular person's genes, but some fear such cards could lead to a kind of Brave New World, a reference to the "negative utopia" in the book by Aldous Huxley in which parents...............

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THIS STORY