Inspired by critical remarks from @Laura-2 about “bio/acc”, my question is, when and how does something like this give rise to causal explanation and actual cures? Maybe GWAS is a precedent. You end up with evidence that a particular gene or allele is correlated with a particular trait, but you have no idea why. That lets you (and/or society) know some risks, but it doesn’t actually eliminate disease, unless you think you can get there by editing out risky alleles, or just screening embryos. Otherwise this just seems to lead (optimistically) to better risk management, and (pessimistically) to a “Gattaca” society in which DNA is destiny, even more than it is now.
I’m no biologist. I’m hoping someone who is, can give me an idea of how far this GWAS-like study of genotype-phenotype correlations, actually gets us towards new explanations and new cures. What’s the methodology for closing that gap? What extra steps are needed? How much have we benefited from GWAS so far?
Inspired by critical remarks from @Laura-2 about “bio/acc”, my question is, when and how does something like this give rise to causal explanation and actual cures? Maybe GWAS is a precedent. You end up with evidence that a particular gene or allele is correlated with a particular trait, but you have no idea why. That lets you (and/or society) know some risks, but it doesn’t actually eliminate disease, unless you think you can get there by editing out risky alleles, or just screening embryos. Otherwise this just seems to lead (optimistically) to better risk management, and (pessimistically) to a “Gattaca” society in which DNA is destiny, even more than it is now.
I’m no biologist. I’m hoping someone who is, can give me an idea of how far this GWAS-like study of genotype-phenotype correlations, actually gets us towards new explanations and new cures. What’s the methodology for closing that gap? What extra steps are needed? How much have we benefited from GWAS so far?