Thursday, April 17, 2008
Gene linked to lung cancer for smokers
I was browsing through Yahoo's science news and I came across an interesting article which said that "Three independent studies released Wednesday have identified a tiny variation in the human genome that make some people more vulnerable to lung cancer than others." It goes on to say that the cancer-causing genetic snippets are on chromosome 15 and that the studies disagree on whether the genetic glitchincreases the risk of cancer by itself or only in people who smoke. I thought this was interesting on two levels. First, we have been talking about how media reports on studies usually differ in some aspect or don't fully cover the same information as in the original studies. Also, we have been talking about the sources out there that allow for 'genetic mapping.' I wonder, with this new information, if the media report is accurate in regards to all three of the studies and also whether afterward there have been new people purchasing genetic mapping. It would be interesting to find out..
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This topic was in a post a week or two ago about the studies being published in Nature.
http://comm285.blogspot.com/2008/04/lung-cancer-genes-identified.html
The studies did find slightly different results, but the differences were not covered as in-depth in the Yahoo article as in the actual report. In fact, it was simplified. The Yahoo news article "simplified" the results. They did not use the big "genetics" jargon. Also, I saw it used a lot of quotes from the researchers. It's funny, though, because the quotes weren't really necessary or substantial. I feel like those quotes were put in just to add to credibility.
oops.. sorry, it is hard to keep up with all of the posts!
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