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To Predict Future Diseases, Doctors Will Map Newborns' Genes
If you could find out your baby’s future health problems right after he or she was born, would you want to know? Some new parents will get to make that decision soon. This month, doctors in Boston will begin the BabySeq project, in which they will sequence the genomes of newborns to look for signs of diseases that begin in childhood.
“We’ve been at an impasse for the last few years--we’ve had the technology to deliver information about future health, but we’ve not been able to use it because of all the issues around it,” says Robert Green, a Harvard Medical School professor who is working on the BabySeq project.
It’s routine for doctors to test newborns for up to 30 treatable diseases, and pregnant women can have blood tests to asses their risk of passing on diseases. But for this project, the team will look at 1,700 protein-coding genes that are strongly tied to diseases that begin during early childhood. Doctors will offer to sequence the genomes of 240 babies in intensive care at Boston Children’s Hospital, as well as 240 healthy babies born at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Doctors will search for mutations connected to specific diseases and genes associated with incurable childhood conditions, where advanced warning could help parents be better prepared to treat the malady. However, the sequencing is only for pinpointing diseases that develop early in childhood; the researchers will not look for signs of adult or age-related conditions like Alzheimer’s or breast cancer.
After the sequencing is complete, a geneticist and a genetic counselor will summarize the results of the analysis for the parents, and each child’s pediatrician will receive copies of the findings as a guide for future medical care. The team will also monitor the children, the parents and their physicians for a minimum of five years. Parents can request access to their child’s raw data at the end of the project, though Green says this could be analyzed inappropriately.
Some experts have pointed out the ethical concerns of this project (not to mention its very GATTACA-like feel). Donna Dickenson, a professor of medical ethics at the University of London, mentioned that this project removes the child’s right to choose and could affect parenting styles. Companies could also take advantage of people who hear about projects like this, telling people they can predict personality traits or skills. But the way Green sees it, sequencing children's genomes at birth was an inevitable step forward, so he hopes BabySeq will tackle the issue in a smart way.
“We know the questions that the world has about this issue, and we have to start trying to answer them,” Green says, “but we’re not going to be able to do that by speculating. We answer them by starting a project in a carefully monitored environment, so that if something goes awry or causes unexpected distress, we are in a position to say, ‘Wait, stop, let’s not go down this road,’ and then document the fact that it happened.”
Source: http://www.popsci.com/doctors-will-map-newborns-genes-test-diseases
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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