It’s been a few days since my post on the FDA DTC hearings was linked around the blogosphere, and generated some incredibly well informed discussion. There are plenty of reactions, but there are two which I want to point to specifically. First, Mary Carmichael at Wild Type, who takes a stance more in keeping with my own. And second, Mike the Mad Biologist, who tends to be more sympathetic to the idea that regulation of DTC medical results are necessary. Over the past few days I’ve received some feedback from medical professionals too expressing worry about total laissez-faire.

In regards to Mike’s post, I will admit that I am not totally disinclined toward paternalism. I’m not a libertarian, though my sympathies in that direction are often clear. When it comes to major public health issues the wisdom gained by the professionals through experience and the scientific method needs to be determinative in terms of public policy. But I simply do not see the misinformation inadvertently fostered by DTC personal genomics as in the same kind of category as anti-vaccination paranoia or the results from HIV tests. The medical inferences one makes are generally weak to ...

Due to a “busy” cat-schedule, the regular Friday posting was delayed for one day. If you have a problem with it, the individual with whom you can take it up is indefinitely taking a nap. So good luck with that!

1) First, a post from the past: The Dark Age Mighty Whitey.

2) Weird search query of the week: “kristin kreuk with glasses.”

3) Comment of the week, in response to “Your genes, your rights – FDA’s Jeffrey Shuren misleading testimony under oath”, there were many good comments. But I’ll highlight this one from Dan:

Furthermore, all CLIA certified operations have to pass very stringent proficiency testing to maintain their certification. There is no such oversight for DTC operations,

Joe has already noted that 23andMe, deCODEme and Pathway are CLIA-certified. I can tell you that Navigenics is as well. You’re right that some of the scurrilous operators aren’t CLIA-licensed, and that should be stopped – but that isn’t the responsibility of the FDA.

Even those of us who oppose FDA involvement in DTC typically agree that regulation of analytic validity is important (CLIA is actually a terrible system in many ways, but there currently isn’t ...

Zack Ajmal now has over 50 participants in the Harappa Ancestry Project. This does not include the Pakistani populations in the HGDP, the HapMap Gujaratis, the Indians from the SVGP. Nevertheless, all these samples still barely cover vast heart of South Asia, the Indo-Gangetic plain. Here is the provenance of the submitted samples Zack has so far:

Punjab: 7
Iran: 7
Tamil: 6
Bengal: 5
Andhra Pradesh: 2
Bihar: 2
Karnataka: 2
Caribbean Indian: 2
Kashmir: 2
Uttar Pradesh: 2
Sri Lankan: 2
Kerala: 2
Iraqi Arab: 2
Anglo-Indian: 1
Roma: 1
Goa: 1
Rajasthan: 1
Baloch: 1
Unknown: 1
Egyptian/Iraqi Jew: 1
Maharashtra: 1

Again, note the underrepresentation of two of India’s most populous states, Uttar Pradesh, ~200 million, and Bihar, ~100 million. Nevertheless, there are already some interesting yields from the project. Below I’ve reedited Zack’s static images (though go to his website for something more dynamic) with the labels of individuals. I’ve highlighted myself and my parents with the red pointers.

To the left is a set of plots and tables which I’ve spliced together from Zack’s various posts. What you need to know is that this at K = 12, and I’ve used the labels that Zack gave the various putative “ancestral populations” which emerged out ...