My son, who is 19, wanted a nice jacket and his genome for Christmas this year. He had found out that a company called 23andMe would tell him about his genetic susceptibility for diseases and his ancestry for only $99. 23andMe is a private company that started doing direct to consumer genetic testing in 2007 and has progressively lowered their prices and increased the amount and sophistication of information they give clients since then. My sister bought my son the genetic kit and the padded envelope was under the tree for him on December 25th. He opened up the little plastic tube inside, spit in it and sent it back. In a couple of months he had all sorts of interesting information. He was most interested to see what parts of the world his ancestors sprang from, but also got information about scads of other things including his sensitivity to caffeine, ability to recognize bitter tastes, whether his muscles were predominantly "fast twitch" suggesting he would be a good s...
The cost of health care in the US is higher than anywhere else in the world, and yet we are not healthier than our peer nations. In fact, in terms of such measures as infant mortality and life span, we don't measure up. Why is this? Many people involved in providing or receiving care have some pretty good ideas about what costs so much, and what we can do to reduce costs and improve quality. Sharing these stories is an important step in creating affordable universal health care.