The dawning of the age of genomic medicine, finally

by
in science on (#3F7)
When I first started studying bioinformatics almost fifteen years ago (!) what drew me to the field was the promise that we might soon be able to provide effective, personalized treatments for a wide variety of diseases. There have been some successes along the way, like genetic tests for warfarin dosage, but for the most part our gains in understanding of basic biology haven't been matched by clinical advances. Now it looks like that's finally about to change, and it's about time.

Too many people suffer and die from too many diseases that we more or less understand, but can't effectively treat. I hated it when I worked in hands-on patient care, and I hate it now in the lab. We are, finally, getting there.
Reply 7 comments

insta-dupe (Score: 4, Interesting)

by danieldvorkin@pipedot.org on 2014-03-08 17:55 (#B4)

Over on Soylent, someone pointed out that this story was published almost simultaneously there and on Slashdot as well as here, and didn't seem particularly happy about it. Guilty; I submitted the story to each site because I think it's an interesting and important topic, and I honestly didn't expect it to be published in all three places. Do people object to this? If so, I won't do it any more, but I'd like to know what our evolving community's standard will be.

Re: insta-dupe (Score: 3, Insightful)

by wildwombat@pipedot.org on 2014-03-09 08:53 (#BC)

I have no problem with it. Also, this site is so small and the story rate is so slow that any good ones should be submitted even if they have been posted elsewhere.

Cheers,
-WW

Re: insta-dupe (Score: 1)

by reziac@pipedot.org on 2014-03-10 06:20 (#C2)

Good by me. Even if it's on all three, I might only happen to notice the story on one of them, or the comments might be significantly different. So -- no worries.

Re: insta-dupe (Score: 2, Interesting)

by bryan@pipedot.org on 2014-03-10 08:02 (#C5)

At Soylent's staff meeting last week they agreed to forbid editors (just editors, not members) from cross-posting stories to the different news-for-nerds sites. This had the obvious effect of reducing new story submissions on Pipedot. Of course, some stories are just too popular to not get reported everywhere, and I have no problems with dupes slipping through.

I have to admit, though, it's a little annoying to find a worthy news item, write up a story about it, submit it, then notice that the green/red sites already have a similar story posted.

Re: insta-dupe (Score: 1)

by sleazyridr@pipedot.org on 2014-03-10 15:10 (#CM)

It depends on whether this site is to become an independent site or if it's trying to find a niche where /. and SL don't cover them. I could be happy either way. I'd like to see different opinions drawn to the various sites so different discussions would happen, but I realise that's very hard to do and it might be too hard to avoid the 3 sites just becoming clones of each other.

Story link appears to be gone. (Score: 1)

by kerrany@pipedot.org on 2014-03-11 17:01 (#F5)

Looks like the story link's gone down already. Maybe next time get a permalink (if there is such a thing)?