Epidemiology confirms that diabetes is caused by environmental factors, gene therapy is an expensive waste of resources.

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You’re joking, right?  About the waste of resources thing I mean…

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“The results of this costly international exercise have been disappointing. About 2,000 sites on the human genome have been statistically linked with various diseases, but in many cases the sites are not inside working genes, suggesting there may be some conceptual flaw in the statistics. And in most diseases the culprit DNA was linked to only a small portion of all the cases of the disease. It seemed that natural selection has weeded out any disease-causing mutation before it becomes common.”

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Sometimes the first forays into new fields of science don’t pan out.  Occasionally we get things wrong and have to make adjustments to our methods.  It’s not entirely unexpected, especially when dealing with cutting edge technology.  I suppose we could just give up each field after the first disappointing experiment though, that seems reasonable too.

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uh, I have to agree with Rigamortus here.

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Acu-P., stick to puncturing.
Environmental factors can trigger Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes in genetically predisposed individuals. (emphasis on the last three words.)

As Matt Ridley shouted in his book “Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters”: “Genes are not there to cause diseases!”
But knowing which genes are turned on or off (or missing or elongated) can tell us much about what’s gone wrong and how to fix it.

This, is a very good thing.

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I will go back to puncturing in a minute.

Diabetes is an epidemic. Our children’s life expectancy may be less then ours as a result. Did our genes change in a generation? Is the solution found by studying each kids’ genome at $500,00 each?

I am always going to support scientific research but object to this particular line of research being misrepresented as capable of leading to an effective treatment in a reasonable amount of time.

Our genes adapted themselves to our environment and can be expected to work well under those circumstances. When we changed our habitat, our metabolism couldn’t catch up. Are we to fix this epidemic by changing our genes? or restoring our habitat?

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