Daily Archives: January 26, 2012


Stephen Adams writes in the Daily Telegraph: A national DNA database is needed if the NHS is to capitalise on advances in technology and offer personalised medicine to all in the future, advisors have told the Government. At the moment the health service is just starting to offer patients genetic testing, for example to tell if they will respond to certain cancer fighting drugs. But in the future the technology is likely to be central to many areas of healthcare – from testing pregnant women’s blood to check the foetus’s risk of Down’s syndrome, to tracking disease outbreaks. Sir John Bell, chair of the Human Genomics Strategy Group, said to deliver ‘genomic’ based medicine in the future, a national database was necessary. Speaking yesterday (Wednesday) to launch a report by the group to make this happen, he said: “It’s almost impossible to go forward with the whole personalised medicine agenda, […]

National DNA database needed for personalised medicine drive