The Mount Sinai Health System began an effort this week to build a vast database of patient genetic information that can be studied by researchers — and by a large pharmaceutical company.
The goal is to search for treatments for illnesses ranging from schizophrenia to kidney disease, but the effort to gather genetic information for many patients, collected during routine blood draws, could also raise privacy concerns.
The data will be rendered anonymous, and Mount Sinai said it had no intention of sharing it with anyone other than researchers. But consumer or genealogical databases full of genetic information, such as Ancestry.com and GEDmatch, have been used by detectives searching for genetic clues that might help them solve old crimes.
Vast sets of genetic sequences can unlock new insights into many diseases and also pave the way for new treatments, researchers at Mount Sinai say. But the only way to compile those research databases is to first convince huge numbers of people to agree to have their genomes sequenced.
Following an annual CGS tradition, we present a selection of our favorite Biopolitical Times posts of the past year. Contributors include staff, consultants and allies. Many more posts that are worth your time can be found in the archive — scroll down and “VIEW MORE” as needed — or by using the “Advanced options” in the search function to select by Content Type &/or Date.
By Sarojini Nadimpally and Gargi Mishra, The Wire | 12.15.2024
Aggregated News
In-vitro fertilisation (IVF) as assisted reproductive technology (ART) has been in vogue for quite a few decades now. While IVF has been hailed as a significant scientific advancement, with many advantages, here are some limitations which bear keeping in mind...
It is hard to make predictions, especially about the future, as Yogi Berra, Niels Bohr, and other luminaries have remarked. But there are already signs that the incoming Trump administration may have some difficulty establishing consistent policies about controversial issues concerning human reproduction.
On the one hand, consider “the conservative blueprint for a second Trump administration.”
The notorious Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership seeks to delete terms such as “reproductive rights” from “every federal...
In the days after Daphna Cardinale delivered her second child, she experienced a rare sense of calm and wonder. The feeling was a relief after so much worrying: She and her husband, Alexander, had tried for three years to conceive...
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