Word: problem
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...biggest problem with patenting genes is that while scientists have at least a general idea of what specific strands of genetic coding do, often it's just that--general. Investigators do sometimes succeed in isolating a single, crisp gene with a single known function. Often, however, researchers trying to map genes get no further than marking off fragmentary stretches of DNA that may be thousands of bases in length. These so-called expressed sequence tags may have real genetic information embedded in them, but determining where those nuggets are and what their structure is takes more digging...
...high-school graduate was ever more unlikely to succeed than Venter. He was a chronic discipline problem--even as a child he refused to take tests--and his parents despaired. In 1964, after being promoted out of high school, Venter moved from his San Francisco home to Southern California, where he dedicated himself to surfing, sailing and the life of a beach...
...analysis. Only those that pass the test are implanted. Says Dr. Jeffrey Botkin, a University of Utah pediatrics professor: "Instead of aborting a fetus, you're flushing down a bunch of 16-cell embryos--which, to a lot of folks [who oppose abortion], is a lot less of a problem...
...Primary-care physicians, who guard the portals of today's managed-health-care system, rarely have had any training in clinical genetics. "My job is centered almost as much on educating doctors as patients," says genetics counselor Michelle Fox of the UCLA Medical Center. If they uncover a genetic problem in patients, like a family history of muscular dystrophy in a couple who want a child, savvy physicians will enlist a trained specialist like Fox. These specialists can explore with the couple what it means to care for a child with muscular dystrophy (under improved treatment, such children can survive...
...Lawrence the question is being raised anew, as men--all but one of them presumably innocent--weigh the ease of submitting to a DNA test against their right to refuse and the suspicion that would be raised if they did. It's a problem that is becoming more and more familiar--and, for civil libertarians, cause for more and more alarm. "These are technologies in which powerful organs in society control members with less power," frets Philip Bereano, a member of the American Civil Liberties Union's board of directors. "They are inherently violative of civil rights...