genomeboy.com

For better or worse, the New York Times has become a near-daily fount of genomic stories–well beyond the weekly deluge in Science Times. IMHO, so far it’s for the better (assuming they don’t bring Judith Miller back to cover science). From Sunday’s paper:

• Skip Gates, whose view of genetic ancestry seems to be, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em…and then beat ‘em. I don’t know if it will work, but I think his emphasis on combining genetic data with oral history is admirable. It’s seems to me to be analogous to trying to bring phenotypes into personal genomics in a systematic way, something no one has yet succeeded in doing.
• DNA has exonerated more than 200 people…short of a cure for cancer, there may be no better endorsement for the power of genomic technology to do good. It’s after they let you out of the joint that the trouble begins. Another testament to the messiness of our species and the environments we create. These articles are absolutely heartbreaking.
• Jim Watson…boring?! A sure sign of the apocalypse.
• Eleven Romanovs, present and accounted for.

Everyday I wake up, snarf down my Honeycomb, read the newspaper and then the latest output from The DNA Network. It’s like drinking from a fire hose. As Hugh Rienhoff said so eloquently in last Sunday’s paper:

The real news is that the genetic genie is out of the bottle. The consumer’s embrace of genetic analysis is now unstoppable. And though the medical community warns how little we can actually learn from most of our genes, these caveats do not diminish our curiosity.