Genetic fingerprints will help extend life

By SIMON COLLINS

A drop of blood from a thumbprick will be enough to test 10,000 elements of our health a decade or two from now, says a leading scientist.

A pioneer of the US biotechnology industry, Dr Leroy Hood, told the Bio 2004 conference in San Francisco yesterday that scientists would soon be able to spot the genetic fingerprints of most ailments by running that drop of blood through a computer.

Six-monthly genetic checkups would warn of the susceptibility to diseases such as heart disease, allowing people to take cholesterol-thinning pills and change their diet long before the at-risk age for heart attacks.

It would also catch cancer and other slow-growth diseases early enough to allow treatment.

"My prediction is that, if this comes through over the next 30 years or so, we will see an enormous elongation of perhaps 10 to 20 years in the productive lifespan of each individual," he said.

A biochemist who co-founded Amgen, Applied Biosystems and several other companies, he was awarded the 2004 Biotechnology Heritage Award at the Bio conference.

He said the new understanding of genetics would transform medicine.

"We will in 10 years have nanotechnology tools that will let us sequence your genome in a fraction of an hour for less than $1000, he said.

"We'll have devices to prick your thumb and make 10,000 measurements and make the blood a window into health and disease.

"In time we will be able, with this hand-held device, to prick your thumb, take an analysis, send that information by cellphone into a server, and every six months it will send you a message saying, 'You're fine,' or, 'You'd better see your oncologist'."

He said the protesters who have threatened to shut down the conference yesterday showed that the industry had failed to explain its potential.

"We have failed to recognise how remiss we as scientists have been in taking to the public knowledge of what science is and knowledge of the opportunities as well as the challenges."