Other Blogs of Interest: The Personal Genome; Eye On DNA; The Genetic Genealogist

From Jason Bobe's The Personal Genome: Genomics as a medical tool and lifestyle choice:
"Camping Around Health Insurance Discrimination".

People who offer solutions to the genetics and health insurance issue, tend to fall into three camps:

1. the patient advocates
2. the free-market purists
3. the ignotarians
I’ll take each in turn below ....

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From Hsien-Hsien Lei's Eye On DNA:
"Amerindian DNA Sells for 55 Dollars".

Clearly, scientists and others asking indigenous populations to donate biological samples need to do a better of job of communicating the overarching goals and benefits such studies can achieve. Judith Greenberg, director of genetics and developmental biology at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences:

This is sort of a balancing act. We don’t want to do something that makes a whole tribe or people unhappy or angry. On the other hand, the scientific community is using these samples, which were accepted and maintained under perfectly legitimate procedures, for the benefit of mankind.

Legitimate for us maybe, but not necessarily for the Karitiana people.

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From Blaine Bettinger's The Genetic Genealogist:
The Genographic Project Public Participation Mitochondrial DNA Database:

An overview of-- The Genographic Project Public Participation Mitochondrial DNA Database. Behar DM, Rosset S, Blue-Smith J, Balanovsky O, Tzur S, et al. PLoS Genetics Vol. 3, No. 6, e104. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.0030104.
Bettinger notes: "This paper is all about the mtDNA sequences they have obtained through the project. In the first 18 months of the project, they have collected an amazing 78,590 mtDNA genotypes!!"