Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, everybody, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future and says, may
Speaker 1: you stay forever young. I'm Joe McCormick and I'm Lauren
Speaker 1: bock Obama. Our other co host of Jonathan Strickland is
Speaker 1: out on vacation this week. So Joe and I are
Speaker 1: forging bravely ahead by ourselves into the future, into the
Speaker 1: future where we will all be immortal. Uh wait, wait,
Speaker 1: wait wait immortal. I mean really, we've talked about this,
Speaker 1: the future. Everybody knows that in the future, everybody's gonna
Speaker 1: live forever. Forever sounds like a really long time, and
Speaker 1: also like we might have to be vampires. And I'm
Speaker 1: not entirely sure that I'm into that, but but there
Speaker 1: are some some researchers who are planning some slightly more
Speaker 1: concrete ways of creating greater longevity in the human population. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm skeptical about the living forever, but I'm I'm into
Speaker 1: the living longer. That seems kind of doable, longer and
Speaker 1: also healthier. Right, that's a big one. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: there's a specific group of researchers who have started up
Speaker 1: a company called Human Longevity, inc. Um that that has
Speaker 1: has a whole plan for this. Right. They have just
Speaker 1: announced launch about a month ago, and that's what we
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about today was Human Longevity Inc. There
Speaker 1: sort of plan for the future and what it means
Speaker 1: for longevity, uh and the idea of staying healthy, not
Speaker 1: just living longer, but but preventing the diseases of aging. Right.
Speaker 1: Their specific plan is to create a business that consequences
Speaker 1: many as a hundred thousand people's genomes, microbiomes, and like
Speaker 1: bloodstream biochemicals every year um. All of this in order
Speaker 1: to create a for profit database for research, thus help
Speaker 1: helping people live longer and healthier and making some money
Speaker 1: while they're at it. Okay, yeah, so we wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about their plans. But before we get to their plan,
Speaker 1: I think we should talk about some of the big
Speaker 1: wigs behind this launch. Yeah yeah, because the founders, although
Speaker 1: you may not have heard their names, you've definitely heard
Speaker 1: about some of their projects. So who are we dealing
Speaker 1: with your job? Well, the big one, the main founder
Speaker 1: is J. Craig Venter uh known to some as Darth
Speaker 1: Ventor some of his His less adoring contemporaries would probably
Speaker 1: refer to him that way on the internet. But he's
Speaker 1: a he's a big influencer. Yeah yeah, And he's been
Speaker 1: working in this for a few decades now. He was
Speaker 1: the leader of the private sector venture to sequence the
Speaker 1: human genome back in the I guess it started maybe
Speaker 1: like late eighties, early nineties, but ranging through the early ops.
Speaker 1: While the Human Genome Project was heading forward to map
Speaker 1: the human genome with public funding, uh, ventor was coming
Speaker 1: in on the side saying, let's race them to the
Speaker 1: finish line, basically from the private sector side. Right. He
Speaker 1: was doing this through a company called cela Um, which,
Speaker 1: as much as we want it to be, is not
Speaker 1: the celery mafia, right. Whenever I hear that, I think
Speaker 1: it's some big agribusiness thing where they you know, all
Speaker 1: the celery in the world comes through us. We're the
Speaker 1: only game in town for celery. But no, they were
Speaker 1: for genetics and genomics, yes um and and this entire
Speaker 1: race caused a lot of controversy in the genetics community
Speaker 1: because they started out holding their data for for profit
Speaker 1: instead of sharing it publicly, all the while using public
Speaker 1: data from the Human Genome Project in order to complete
Speaker 1: this work UM so, so they they experienced a lot
Speaker 1: of kind of nasty pressure from other genetics and funding companies,
Speaker 1: and eventually released their findings, albeit with a download per
Speaker 1: time period maximum, to the public for use. But you know, whatever,
Speaker 1: whatever your opinion about Seller's motivations and policies, they did
Speaker 1: pioneer and approach to sequencing that the Human Genome Project
Speaker 1: wound up using UM because of its its terrific speed
Speaker 1: and accuracy. So so that's awesome. Yeah. Absolutely. Vnor himself
Speaker 1: has a whole lot of critics you'll find on the internet,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned with his other cute little moniker earlier,
Speaker 1: but he he's somebody who you kind of can't ignore, like, uh,
Speaker 1: whatever criticisms you might have of him. Some people think
Speaker 1: he's an egomaniac, some people, you know, they're all kinds
Speaker 1: of things. People say, he's definitely done some really important
Speaker 1: pioneering work. Absolutely. Yeah. So after that, we have Peter Diamandis.
Speaker 1: He is somebody who you may have heard about from
Speaker 1: us with reference to space tourism, right, yeah, we did
Speaker 1: that that whole series of space tourism space travel episodes
Speaker 1: in January, and that is because he founded Space Adventures,
Speaker 1: which is one of those space tourism companies. He's also
Speaker 1: the chairman and CEO of the X Prize Um, which
Speaker 1: is that that thing that awards funds to ventures and
Speaker 1: awesome stuff like a like private space flight and a
Speaker 1: hundred mile per gallant equivalent cars. He's also a co
Speaker 1: founder and chairman of Singularity University, along with no less
Speaker 1: than Ray Kurtzweil. Um of course, Singularity University being an
Speaker 1: uncredited extra weird stuff Silicon Valley educational institution. So who
Speaker 1: is our third co founder here? It is Robert Herreri.
Speaker 1: That's right. He's the founder of um anthrow Genesis, which
Speaker 1: is aging therapy company that was purchased by cell gene
Speaker 1: also not about celery, and no, it is they study
Speaker 1: the genetics of celery. I cannot tell if you're messing
Speaker 1: with me right now. I'm totally kidding, excellent. It was
Speaker 1: purchased by celging in two thousand three, and uh, and
Speaker 1: they focus on stem cell research and specifically placental stem
Speaker 1: cell research for for treatment of debilitating diseases and also
Speaker 1: like organ and tissue degenerations. So so all of these
Speaker 1: have very practical applications in the study of aging and longevity. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we got our big wigs together, and what do
Speaker 1: they do. Let's tell the story of the launch of
Speaker 1: Human longevi the inc. Okay, in early March, of Human
Speaker 1: Longevity announced UM that they existed, a UM and and
Speaker 1: and be, that they had generated seventy million dollars in
Speaker 1: startup funds, and furthermore that they are working in partnership
Speaker 1: with several organizations right now, mainly UM University of California,
Speaker 1: San Diego's Mores Cancer Center. They are planning on starting
Speaker 1: with a relatively conservative forty thou genome sequences per year,
Speaker 1: which is what the two Ilumina high s x ten
Speaker 1: machines that they bought can handle. I have no idea
Speaker 1: if if that string of words that I just said
Speaker 1: is how you actually pronounce that machines name. Apparently they
Speaker 1: are really fancy schmancy genetics machines. I I don't. I
Speaker 1: haven't used one personally. Yeah, apparently they cost about ten
Speaker 1: million dollars apiece. But they can reduce the cost of
Speaker 1: sequencing a person's genome too. This is predicted now about
Speaker 1: a thousand bucks now let's compare that to how much
Speaker 1: it has cost in the past. Um, the Human Genome project,
Speaker 1: I believe was just under three billion dollars. It was
Speaker 1: like two point seven billion dollars, which it was was
Speaker 1: under budget, So that's impressive. Um, I mean it was
Speaker 1: it was like point three billion dollars under budget, which
Speaker 1: is terrific, but still each Yeah, Venor cites his first
Speaker 1: sequence costead of around a hundred million, he brings that
Speaker 1: number up. Uh so it's definitely come down over time,
Speaker 1: huch improvement. And that thousand dollar mark Joe you pointed
Speaker 1: out was was actually a kind of unofficial goal for
Speaker 1: the genetics community for a long time, right, Yeah, people
Speaker 1: have been talking about this for years since I think
Speaker 1: just after two thousand, people start talking about the thousand
Speaker 1: dollar genome because this is a problem, like we know
Speaker 1: that we can learn a lot from the data provided
Speaker 1: in our genes, but if it costs so much money
Speaker 1: to sequence a genome, it's a lot of trouble getting there. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: If it's billions of dollars every time, that's a difficult
Speaker 1: thing to fund, certainly, right. So essentially just putting together
Speaker 1: a whole lot of money and reducing the cost of
Speaker 1: sequencing a genome can take us a long way in
Speaker 1: terms of learning more about the relationship between our genome
Speaker 1: and the ways we age and the diseases we get.
Speaker 1: The disease that the company is going to be focusing
Speaker 1: on first is cancer UM and that's why they're working
Speaker 1: with UC San Diego's Mores Cancer Center. UM. They're planning
Speaker 1: on sequencing the genomes of cancer patients, both their healthy
Speaker 1: cells and also tumor cells in an attempt to better
Speaker 1: understand these patients and the course of their disease. They're
Speaker 1: they're starting out offering the sequencing free of charge to
Speaker 1: the patients, although the company has stated that that they're
Speaker 1: planning or kind of hoping to be able to charge
Speaker 1: for the service later on down the line. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: don't know when that will happen, but that that's I
Speaker 1: think the eventual goal. Yes, So what does this mean?
Speaker 1: Why does it help a cancer patient or anybody at
Speaker 1: all really to get their genome sequence to well, So
Speaker 1: we'll start with the broad The broad view is that
Speaker 1: genome sequencing data can be gathered in conjunction with massive
Speaker 1: amounts of other general data about health UH and the
Speaker 1: health of the sequencing subjects. So hopefully by combining and
Speaker 1: cross referencing these data points, we can learn a lot
Speaker 1: more about how to treat diseases, especially age correlated diseases,
Speaker 1: and eventually more about aging itself. And Venera said he
Speaker 1: wants to put together basically a new age of a
Speaker 1: quantitative approach to health, connecting all the pieces of data
Speaker 1: that people have been collecting separately for all these years,
Speaker 1: so we can sequence a genome and we can collect
Speaker 1: data about you every time you go to the doctor.
Speaker 1: He wants to put this info together in a massive
Speaker 1: way and look for correlations. Right, And we've talked a
Speaker 1: little bit, I mean a lot actually about about the
Speaker 1: genome and um, the microbiome before on this show. If
Speaker 1: you want a really full treatment on genes, you can
Speaker 1: check out our pot cast episode Genes one oh one,
Speaker 1: which published back on August um. But but basically every
Speaker 1: time we've we've said on this podcast that humans are
Speaker 1: really complicated biomachines and that we're really going to need
Speaker 1: more research if we're ever going to understand why are
Speaker 1: our bodies work the way that they do. We were
Speaker 1: talking about these three broad categories of of genes and
Speaker 1: microbiome and blood chemicals. You know, the genome is kind
Speaker 1: of like like our code. The microbiome is like a
Speaker 1: kind of like a network of other users that are
Speaker 1: in the system. And and the blood content um is
Speaker 1: data that that we, being the sort of system administrator
Speaker 1: and along with the other users, put into the system.
Speaker 1: The system being our body. Um. So, so if we
Speaker 1: can control all of these elements, then we'll be able
Speaker 1: to live longer and healthier. Pypathetically, not just control them,
Speaker 1: but understand the relationship between them. Yes, definitely, um yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's sort of the broad view. But to sort
Speaker 1: of zero in on what this means for the individual patient,
Speaker 1: I think we should talk about a few ways that
Speaker 1: getting your genome sequenced with this technology that they have
Speaker 1: can make a big difference in your own health profile.
Speaker 1: And these are practical applications that are going on. Now.
Speaker 1: This isn't this isn't in the future. This is right.
Speaker 1: We are living the incredible future, right, this is already
Speaker 1: for real, and learning more about different correlations between elements
Speaker 1: of the genome and diseases that we experience will take
Speaker 1: us even farther. So the first thing I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about was preventative medicine. So having your whole genome
Speaker 1: sequence can help you know what diseases you have a
Speaker 1: predisposition for. So if you know what diseases you are
Speaker 1: at the highest risk for, you can take preventative measures
Speaker 1: towards specifically those diseases, preventing them before you get them,
Speaker 1: rather than treating them once the symptoms appear. Uh And
Speaker 1: and the founders of this company have talked about this
Speaker 1: that we have kind of a active approach to health.
Speaker 1: Right now, you wait to get sick, and then you
Speaker 1: treat the sickness, you try to do something about it. Well,
Speaker 1: what's obviously much better than that is knowing how you
Speaker 1: are most likely to get sick based on who you are,
Speaker 1: based on your genes, and then taking steps to stop
Speaker 1: that before it happens, or to watch for early warning
Speaker 1: signs and catch them early enough to to really do
Speaker 1: more good. Right That's certainly true, because with lots of diseases,
Speaker 1: the earlier you catch it, the much better project uh And.
Speaker 1: One really interesting example of this comes from Vnor himself.
Speaker 1: Ventor actually had his own genome sequence, and one of
Speaker 1: the things that he found out from doing that was
Speaker 1: that he had a particular gene variant. He had the
Speaker 1: APO E four gene variant, which is one of the
Speaker 1: forms of the apollopope protein E gene from chromosome nineteen,
Speaker 1: and that's a gene that creates a protein that affects
Speaker 1: cholesterol and fat in the bloodstream. Research had shown that
Speaker 1: people who have this E four variant that Ventor had
Speaker 1: are at a greater risk for developing Alzheimer's disease, UH
Speaker 1: much greater than people who had other common variants like
Speaker 1: E two or E three. And because this gene variant
Speaker 1: was associated with fat metabolism as well as Alzheimer's, Ventor
Speaker 1: announced that he started taking preventative fat lowering drugs after
Speaker 1: he found out he had this gene variant. That's I
Speaker 1: that's that's great. UM. I don't know if the fat
Speaker 1: lowering drugs he was taking had any effect on the
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's outlook or if that was just specifically for fat
Speaker 1: content in the blood. But one thing that is true
Speaker 1: is that years later he he had his brain scanned
Speaker 1: basically to look for early signs of Alzheimer's. There's plaque.
Speaker 1: I think that that shows up in brain scans. The
Speaker 1: amyloid plaques, and he went in there looking for because
Speaker 1: he knew he had this predisposition, and they saw nothing. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so another thing that that shows, and that's important
Speaker 1: to point out, is that there's not necessarily a one
Speaker 1: to one correlation between the disease you have a predisposition
Speaker 1: for and what you will definitely, Yet like having a
Speaker 1: predisposition just means you're more likely, right, And especially in
Speaker 1: the case of this gene variant, I think that the
Speaker 1: fact that he has it on on one of his
Speaker 1: chromosomes means that he's got like a thirty percent chance
Speaker 1: of developing Alzheimer's. And he said himself, you know you
Speaker 1: can't get thirty percent Alzheimer's. That's that's not how the
Speaker 1: disease works, um, Right, Either either you have it or
Speaker 1: you don't, right. But but it's it's really cool to
Speaker 1: to know that you have this chance and be able
Speaker 1: to therefore get more testing done and and figure out
Speaker 1: whether there are more steps that you need to take. Um.
Speaker 1: And this isn't the only disease that they have found
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff out for. There's a breast cancer
Speaker 1: is a big one, right right, There's the b r
Speaker 1: C A one and b r c A two genes,
Speaker 1: and these are a big deal, especially in the news
Speaker 1: since an announcement by Angelina Jolie right in UH last
Speaker 1: year in she announced that she had undergone a preventative
Speaker 1: double missectomy to to avoid breast cancer because she had
Speaker 1: tested positive for one of these genes well or for
Speaker 1: mutations for a bad mutation on one of these genes,
Speaker 1: and that was known in the scientific literature that Okay,
Speaker 1: we've seen that this certain mutation in the b r
Speaker 1: C A jeans makes you very likely to get breast
Speaker 1: and or ovarian cancer. And so she took preventative steps,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people were praising her basically for UH,
Speaker 1: for doing this and for announcing it publicly, and yeah,
Speaker 1: sort of as a public health consciousness thing. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: definitely a drastic preventative measure, and and it's not the
Speaker 1: right one for for every person. Jolie is is very
Speaker 1: fortunate to have the kind of funds to UM to
Speaker 1: undergo that surgery pri at LEE and also have really
Speaker 1: excellent reconstructive surgery afterwards. UM, and not everyone has access
Speaker 1: to that kind of healthcare. Well, even more than that,
Speaker 1: it was would be the cost of the gene sequencing itself, certainly,
Speaker 1: which used to be a lot more than it is now.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the big reasons that bringing bringing
Speaker 1: down the cost matters a lot. If it's so expensive,
Speaker 1: that means a lot of people won't have these kinds
Speaker 1: of options. Um, but the cheaper you can make it,
Speaker 1: the more widespread you can provide the service. And it's
Speaker 1: definitely really cool that we've got a sex symbol like
Speaker 1: Angelina Jolie talking uh frankly in public about this kind
Speaker 1: of issue. Definitely, Okay, So there, So there's preventive medicine
Speaker 1: we just talked about. Let's say that you don't catch
Speaker 1: something before it happens. Let's say you find out, oh
Speaker 1: I already have cancer or I already have some specific disease.
Speaker 1: Is there any way that having your genome sequence can
Speaker 1: help you? Then? Well, actually, yes, it's still to help
Speaker 1: you a lot. There's this idea of personalized medicine. That's right,
Speaker 1: because right now, treatments for diseases are are based on
Speaker 1: a kind of imaginary average person. At any time that
Speaker 1: any kind of testing on on a drug or treatment
Speaker 1: is done, it's it's with a relatively small population of
Speaker 1: people that may or may not represent what you are,
Speaker 1: and doctors are kind of guessing as to how your
Speaker 1: body is going to react to that treatment, right, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, and even whatever kind of population it's targeted towards,
Speaker 1: there's no one single person. Yeah, it's this, it's this
Speaker 1: average approach. Uh. Wouldn't it be so much better if
Speaker 1: we could look at your genome and say, hey, you
Speaker 1: have these five specific genes that we know respond really
Speaker 1: well to this combination of treatments, as opposed to your
Speaker 1: next door neighbor who has variants of all those genes
Speaker 1: and would respond better to a different drug. Um and
Speaker 1: So there are actually examples of this you can find today.
Speaker 1: There is the anti cancer drug resultantib SO. I know
Speaker 1: the name of that drug sounds weird, but if there's
Speaker 1: evidence that you get a really good response rate for
Speaker 1: a certain type of gene variant, it makes a big
Speaker 1: difference to know whether or not you've got that gene
Speaker 1: variant that responds well. Yeah, there's also a gene that
Speaker 1: predicts um breast cancer patients response to a specific drug
Speaker 1: called her sceptin, and uh, yeah, you know it's having
Speaker 1: having this kind of information beforehand can save a lot
Speaker 1: of time and money. Um, well not just time and money,
Speaker 1: but your life. Like I mean, if I guess that's
Speaker 1: important too. If you say you have a cancer outlook
Speaker 1: and you're being um, you're talking with your doctor about here,
Speaker 1: you know, three different treatment paths we could try. It
Speaker 1: certainly will save you time and money not to try
Speaker 1: one that's not going to work on you. But it
Speaker 1: will also possibly save your life because if you you
Speaker 1: spend time going down one road, um, while you have
Speaker 1: cancer progressing, and it turns out actually, based on your genes,
Speaker 1: it would have been better to go down a different road. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's time that you might not have and make a
Speaker 1: big difference in whether or not you survive or how long.
Speaker 1: Cancer has really been the most successful UM disease group
Speaker 1: for this kind of uh personalized medicine as of yet. UM,
Speaker 1: there's there's also been some some other research and in
Speaker 1: other fields, like there was an association of certain differences
Speaker 1: in a group of genes called CYP for fifty with
Speaker 1: patients reactions to ss r s as are selective serotonin
Speaker 1: reuptake inhibitors, which are a type of antidepressants. But the
Speaker 1: association hasn't been corroborated in clinical studies yet, and this
Speaker 1: particular example is sometimes cited as exemplifying the current problems
Speaker 1: with personalized genetic medicine. UM. You know, the the association
Speaker 1: was announced by one group of researchers, Some doctors and
Speaker 1: genetic testing companies started using it in their practice, but
Speaker 1: further clinical trials haven't proven the association yet. And there's
Speaker 1: worry that we're wasting patients money and time, albeit slightly
Speaker 1: less serious time than with something like cancer, while we're
Speaker 1: getting all of this sussed out. Yeah, which is exactly
Speaker 1: the reason. It's good to have a whole lot more data,
Speaker 1: like they're talking about here, to just just harvest it,
Speaker 1: bring it in, have tons to work with. Um. It's
Speaker 1: a big problem when you you have just enough data,
Speaker 1: you know, to suggest a correlation, but you don't have
Speaker 1: enough to feel that you have a very strong model. Okay.
Speaker 1: And so after these, uh, the next thing, sort of
Speaker 1: the long term goal that they've talked about less specifically
Speaker 1: and more generally is aging itself. So, as Venor points out,
Speaker 1: aging is basically the number one risk factor for like
Speaker 1: most diseases, basically everything, Yeah, tons of stuff and Right now,
Speaker 1: aging is considered inevitable. It's just part of life. But
Speaker 1: the question is could you neetic research like this genome
Speaker 1: sequencing bring about anti aging techniques and so long term,
Speaker 1: the company says its goal is to defeat diseases of
Speaker 1: aging and perhaps even aging itself, with a combination of
Speaker 1: this genomics research and also with stem cell therapy, which
Speaker 1: is not to be overlooked. And that's something we've talked
Speaker 1: about in other podcasts before. So obviously this matters on
Speaker 1: a person to person basis. I mean, most people would
Speaker 1: like to live longer and to be in better shape
Speaker 1: and healthier for more of their lives, so that that's
Speaker 1: sort of a no brainer. Yes, that's the thing we want.
Speaker 1: It could make a big difference for society as a whole,
Speaker 1: for example, because if you are having a harder time
Speaker 1: getting around and doing all the things you want to
Speaker 1: do as you get older because of this thing we
Speaker 1: call aging, it makes it harder for you to say,
Speaker 1: continue to work, Oh sure, you can be more productive.
Speaker 1: You can. You can have all of that great quality
Speaker 1: time with with working that we all look forward to
Speaker 1: in our old age. I mean, well, I mean the
Speaker 1: personal benefits some people probably enjoy their work. But beyond
Speaker 1: working there, there's also just having the quality of life
Speaker 1: that you want to be, the ability to go out
Speaker 1: and do the things you want to do, of course,
Speaker 1: and also freeing up a lot of UM talent and
Speaker 1: minds and time from the kind of end of life
Speaker 1: care that that we provide pretty long term in some
Speaker 1: cases these days. Right, So it's not just about living longer,
Speaker 1: but it's about being able to do more in the
Speaker 1: years that you do live. And it's pretty cool that
Speaker 1: all of this is coinciding with UM, with big data
Speaker 1: technologies and and analysis techniques, because it's you know, we've
Speaker 1: we're already pouring a lot of UM processing power and
Speaker 1: thought into how to sift through this amount of information.
Speaker 1: So so I think that that is UM very fortunate
Speaker 1: and or logical that is happening. At the same time,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's not a coincidence that that we are
Speaker 1: gaining uh and not entirely a coincidence that that we're
Speaker 1: that we're gaining all of these powers at the same time.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well, I mean it totally makes sense this
Speaker 1: kind of thing is becoming enabled in the Internet age,
Speaker 1: So I'm sure it's what we what the way we're
Speaker 1: advancing is not just in terms of our ability to say,
Speaker 1: take some d N a substance and and analyze it
Speaker 1: chemically to see what all is there, but also in
Speaker 1: our analytics capabilities, right having the processing power to to
Speaker 1: do just that, to handle that kind of computation, to
Speaker 1: store all this information, to to automatically cross reference it
Speaker 1: in a meaningful way, that that makes a huge difference,
Speaker 1: I think. But at the same time, I would say
Speaker 1: that while this is a big boon for human life
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, it's also something that I
Speaker 1: think we should be cautious about the era of big
Speaker 1: data and genome sequencing certainly doesn't come without its worries. Uh, certainly,
Speaker 1: there there are some privacy worries. Ventor himself kind of
Speaker 1: brushes those off that that first genome that his private
Speaker 1: company sequenced, sequenced was partially his, and there was a
Speaker 1: little bit it was a composite, just the way the
Speaker 1: same way that the Human Genome Projects first genome was
Speaker 1: was a composit. But at any rate, um, he hasn't
Speaker 1: withheld any of its contents from the public. Um. I'd
Speaker 1: like to note, however, that as an eccentric millionaire. He
Speaker 1: has a little bit less to lose than many average
Speaker 1: humans might by making their genes open source, even with
Speaker 1: anti discrimination acts in place, right, And I think it's
Speaker 1: important to have all of that kind of legislation in
Speaker 1: place that says, Okay, if your genome is becoming something
Speaker 1: that is accessible to the public, even if we find
Speaker 1: out something about the contents of your genome, that's not
Speaker 1: something we can use against you to say, like not
Speaker 1: hire you or something like that. Yeah, I'm definitely worried
Speaker 1: about things like like insurance and employability um as it
Speaker 1: relates to my full genetic code being on file with
Speaker 1: with a big research database that anyone that wants can
Speaker 1: have access to. Yeah, I think that's definitely something that
Speaker 1: is worth being cautious about and something that is very
Speaker 1: important to remind our legislators about as this becomes more common. Sure,
Speaker 1: there's also the fact, like we mentioned at the top
Speaker 1: of the show, Ventor's previous genetics project met with a
Speaker 1: bunch of controversy because it was for profit, and so
Speaker 1: we have to ask the question, is it ethical to
Speaker 1: do medical research with this potential scope and hold it
Speaker 1: for profit. I feel like I don't know enough about
Speaker 1: genetics and genomics and how this business works to really
Speaker 1: ethically make a pronouncement on that issue. My feeling is
Speaker 1: that I want all health things to be free wherever possible.
Speaker 1: But then again, can can they actually happen that way?
Speaker 1: Or do you need to have some kind of investment
Speaker 1: incentive to make this work? Yeah? The flip side of
Speaker 1: the question is, really, is it goal to deny medical
Speaker 1: researchers the same um, the same opportunities monetary opportunities that
Speaker 1: we afford most other people. Um? And is it ethical
Speaker 1: to use taxpayer dollars for this research when um, more
Speaker 1: companies and bigger companies might be willing to provide funding
Speaker 1: if there's a potential dollar profit in it. Um And
Speaker 1: you know, like like note that this project has a
Speaker 1: really expensive buy in. You know, genomes are huge, and
Speaker 1: the variants that lead to particular diseases can be very
Speaker 1: very small and very rare, So lots of sequences might
Speaker 1: be necessary to create any kind of useful findings for
Speaker 1: any given field, I'd agree, Um. Yeah, So what's the
Speaker 1: bottom line, what what's the outlook for this? Well? These
Speaker 1: are these are really big and really valid concerns. And questions.
Speaker 1: And I'm not just saying that because I wrote them down. Um.
Speaker 1: I I do think that that it's something really important
Speaker 1: for for humanity as a whole to to be thinking about. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, the reason that there so big and
Speaker 1: and so valid is that the whole field is so
Speaker 1: wide open and wild west ish right now. You know,
Speaker 1: we're only a little bit more than a decade out
Speaker 1: of having a single full human genome sequenced or a
Speaker 1: compositive a single full human genome sequenced. And Vnor himself
Speaker 1: has said that the genome race was the race to
Speaker 1: the starting line. Um, We're we're all running around with
Speaker 1: this huge wealth of untapped data inside of us and
Speaker 1: and harnessing that could could let us be better people.
Speaker 1: But like you were just saying, we we also need
Speaker 1: industry ethics and laws to to catch up to what
Speaker 1: technology is making possible right now. Uh So, I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, I really hope that Human Longevity Ink succeeds
Speaker 1: at the at the very least in driving genetics forward
Speaker 1: and and forcing people to ask themselves these questions, you know,
Speaker 1: potentially especially lawmakers and other people in the genetics community,
Speaker 1: no doubt. Okay, Well, I guess that about wraps it
Speaker 1: up for human longevity in doesn't it. Yeah, that is
Speaker 1: about all that we have to say about it. If
Speaker 1: you guys have anything to say, then you should get
Speaker 1: in touch with us. You can. You can go to
Speaker 1: FW thinking dot com. That's kind of our home base
Speaker 1: and includes many ways to get in touch with us.
Speaker 1: Also all of our videos, other podcast episodes, and some
Speaker 1: really terrific blog posts that we spend way too much
Speaker 1: time on. Um. You can also find us on social media.
Speaker 1: We are on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus. Our handle
Speaker 1: at all of those places is FW thinking and we
Speaker 1: hope to hear from you guys real soon. Either way,
Speaker 1: we hope that you will tune in again to us.
Speaker 1: So thanks for more on this topic and the future
Speaker 1: of technology. Visit forward thinking dot com brought to you
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