Former President Obama ‘Frustrated’ by Slow Progress in Genomics
Former President Obama ‘Frustrated’ by Slow Progress in Genomics
By Angelica Peebles -
(Bloomberg) -- The use of genomics hasn’t yet reached its full potential, a frustration former President Barack Obama blames on the lumbering US health-care system.
When the first sketches of the human genome were published in the early 2000s, scientists were hopeful they would usher in a new era of medicine. The cost of reading a person’s whole genome, or all their genetic information, has plummeted from about $100 million a person to less than $1,000. But genome sequencing hasn’t yet made it into the mainstream, something that frustrates Obama, who said he became deeply interested in the burgeoning field when he was president.
“I’ve been frustrated by the fact that we’re still not maximizing even the data we currently have,” Obama said Wednesday at a conference hosted by Illumina Inc., the main company that makes machines that can read DNA.
Obama blames the slow progress on the US health-care system, with incentives that aren’t always straightforward and reward clinicians for providing “disease care” rather than health care.
READ MORE: Former President Obama ‘Frustrated’ by Slow Progress in Genomics https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/form...
By Angelica Peebles -
(Bloomberg) -- The use of genomics hasn’t yet reached its full potential, a frustration former President Barack Obama blames on the lumbering US health-care system.
When the first sketches of the human genome were published in the early 2000s, scientists were hopeful they would usher in a new era of medicine. The cost of reading a person’s whole genome, or all their genetic information, has plummeted from about $100 million a person to less than $1,000. But genome sequencing hasn’t yet made it into the mainstream, something that frustrates Obama, who said he became deeply interested in the burgeoning field when he was president.
“I’ve been frustrated by the fact that we’re still not maximizing even the data we currently have,” Obama said Wednesday at a conference hosted by Illumina Inc., the main company that makes machines that can read DNA.
Obama blames the slow progress on the US health-care system, with incentives that aren’t always straightforward and reward clinicians for providing “disease care” rather than health care.
READ MORE: Former President Obama ‘Frustrated’ by Slow Progress in Genomics https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/form...
