Montana governor wants libertarians to move to Idaho ..

[Jeff Bone]

On Friday, Apr 25, 2003, at 11:10 US/Central, Russell Turpin wrote:

> What about this business: anonymous DNA testing
> and screw the patents. Right now, there are DNA
> tests for quite a few genes related to cancer and
> other diseases that cost thousands of dollars,
> because they are monopolized by the companies that
> hold patents on the genes involved.

Hmmm....  nice.  DNA-based genetic diagnostics are still relatively 
nascent, though.  (There are enough good tests that it's a viable 
business, but for cancer diagnostics it's not really the in thing.)  
The bulk of oncodiagnostics these days is apparently done via 
"cytogenetics," a much more involved process.  (Ironically, though far 
more labor intensive, this is less expensive.)  A lab gets tissue or 
other cellular products, cultures it, then harvests / fixes / cuts / 
scopes it to produce a karyotype.  The diagnostic is performed by 
looking at the chromosomes directly rather than DNA sequences.  (E.g., 
chromosome #3 is deleted, #8 is "inverted", #15 is duplicated, #21 is 
truncated, etc. etc. --- this particular set of changes correlates to 
pathology X, Y, or Z...)

Not sure what benefit having an offshore cytogenetics lab would be, 
though.  'Course, I'm just trying to figure out how I can leverage my 
POSSLQ's particular expertise here. :-)

jb