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Leroy Hood (left), president and director of the Institute for Systems Biology, and Kari Stefansson, president and chief executive officer of deCODE, answer questions at the “Storefront Genome” symposium at Covel Commons on Sunday.

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The social impacts of the genetic revolution are closer than we think, according to the UCLA Center for Society, the Individual and Genetics.

A handful of genetics experts from around the world gathered in front of over 350 people at UCLA’s Covel Commons last Sunday to raise and explore these very questions about the future of humans and genetics.

The day-long public symposium, called the “Storefront Genome,” was sponsored by UCLA’s CSIG, which was founded in September of 2001.

The center was created to mediate the debate between individuals and society in order to better understand and implement the information resulting from the genetic revolution.

“This is the Manhattan Project of biology,” said UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale, who addressed the audience at the start of the day. “... We need to get it right.”

Experts widely agree that within the next 10 years, society and individuals will face issues involving genetic engineering for disease prevention, solutions about aging, development of genetically modified foods, and possibly human cloning.

Individuals also will be able to obtain a comprehensive genetic profile of themselves for around $100, according to CSIG. The same person can sequence his or her genome for roughly $1,000 – compared to today’s average cost of $650,000.

“The implications of the genetics revolution are profound, and it is critical to consider the impact of this technology on society and its members,” said Dr. Edward McCabe, chair of CSIG and executive chair of the UCLA Department of Pediatrics.

In the near future, the health care industry will develop the ability to predict, prevent, and provide medical care on an individual basis.

The symposium addressed this ability and the moral and medical issues surrounding the knowledge of predictive medicine.

For instance, would parents really want to know if their child is genetically predisposed to an incurable disease?

“(This is) the biggest window into who we are, and we are drawing back the curtain on that window,” said Gregory Stock, who moderated the event. He is the director of UCLA’s Program on Medicine, Technology and Society and a visiting professor.

“There is no consensus about all of this. We cannot coil back in fear. We need to face these challenges square on,” he said

The ability to understand susceptible genes, to modify them, and to circumvent the limitations of these genes will lead to future medical breakthroughs and may increase the average life expectancy by 20 to 30 years, according to Leroy Hood, president and director of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, Washington and a keynote speaker at the event.

Hood addressed the skeptical argument by saying, “We underestimate what can we do in the long-term (five to 10 years).”

However, the development of the industry will also lead to issues of privacy of an individual’s genetic information.

Employers and health care insurance companies could be particularly interested in a person’s genetic makeup before hiring or selling them an insurance plan – an issue discussed at the symposium.

Experts also believe that the recent trend toward admitting DNA tests as evidence in criminal court cases will expand to other arenas of identification.

From a single drop of blood or a few cheek cells, the genetic identity of humans could be easily recorded.

Every human has a vast amount of DNA, much of which has no known function. Only a small region of genetic material, called “coding regions” perform known functions. The remaining stretches of DNA have variations which can distinguish every human being from each other.

In the future, this information could be obtained when individuals are arrested for a crime, or even when they apply for a driver’s license, citizenship or a government job, according to Mark A. Rothstein, chair of Law and Medicine and director of the Institute for Bioethics, Health Policy and Law at the University of Louisville.

The information could then be stored in a DNA databank for access to any person’s genetic information at any time.

Risks of disclosure to insecure third parties and privacy laws for how this data is used will be debated in Congress in future years, and experts believe there is no clear-cut answer.

“We must balance the risks and benefits,” said Rothstein, who proposed that only non-coding regions should be used for identification, and that samples should be destroyed after analysis.

Furthermore, the risks and benefits of deciding children’s genes before they’re even born extends out to moral and ethical issues, which are more difficult to answer.

But Rothstein is quick to point out that genetics isn’t immutable. For instance, a shy gene in a child may be overcome with proper training while still young. But more serious genetic defects, which are not as easily overcome or are sometimes terminal, in the case of Huntington’s disease, raises more questions about how much knowledge is too much, and what to do with it.

While the experts concurred that there could be widespread disagreement among the public for even the smallest genetic advancement, they unanimously agreed that the genetic revolution must go on.

“People who say ‘turn the research off’ are wrong, and we simply can’t,” said Nancy Wexler, the Higgins professor of neuropsychology at Columbia University. Wexler has also studied the world’s largest family with Huntington’s disease.

“Right now, we can predict; we can’t prevent. We have to push through to the other end.”