Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Biotech / Medical : Biotech Valuation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: scott_jiminez who wrote (1332)	7/13/2000 10:36:17 AM
From: nigel bates	Respond to of 52153

Touche. Looks as though the market agrees with you today. I would, however, emphasise this from biowa's post - "Then I guess I'm the moderate caught in the middle" Not irrational exuberance IMO. I'm off on holiday. nig

To: scott_jiminez who wrote (1332)	7/13/2000 11:06:48 AM
From: Biomaven	Respond to of 52153

scott - This is of course a very complex issue and you make some interesting points. Part of the complexity is that there are several separate issues that are being discussed: 1. What portion of disease incidence is hereditary? In the same issue of the NEJM we find the following: Statistically significant effects of heritable factors were observed for prostate cancer (42 percent of the risk may be explained by heritable factors; 95 percent confidence interval, 29 to 50 percent), colorectal cancer (35 percent; 95 percent confidence interval, 10 to 48 percent), and breast cancer (27 percent; 95 percent confidence interval, 4 to 41 percent). So less than a third of breast cancer is caused by heritable factors. So clearly no scan at birth will have anything very useful to say about susceptibility to breast cancer, or for that matter I would hazard, most other common diseases. 2. A quite separate issue is to what extent the genomics/phenomics research is going to speed understanding of disease states and their treatments. This is the "money" question, and my money says that the impact will be substantial. The important point here is that sometimes even a superficial understanding may be of significant help in developing a treatment. 3. Finally there is the "understanding" issue that you as a scientist are probably most focused on. Here I can only agree with you that our current levels of understanding of something such as brain function is small, and genomics certainly isn't going to be a magic bullet. (In an earlier incarnation, I spent a couple of years at the Stanford AI lab, and I'm quite sympathetic to your reactions to AI "explanations" of anything). Peter