Event: “What is so special about genes? Exploring the wider implications of genetics”

March 27, 2009

Society for Genomics Policy and Population Health
Spring Conference 2009
June 3, 2009

The Spring conference will take place on Wednesday 3 June 2009 at Mary Ward House, Tavistock Place, London.  The meeting will discuss:  

“What is so special about genes?  Exploring the wider implications of genetics”.

• The purpose of this meeting is to examine how truly exceptional genes are. It will examine some of the recent technological and scientific developments that threaten this view, and examine how industry and regulators have sought to accommodate the changing perception of genes within their practice.  It will consider how other types of information (such as that on family history) can be used instead of genetic information as a predictor of disease and more widely in health care. Both genetic information and family history information are used by insurers and employers to predict an individual’s future likelihood of illness and disability.

• However, advances such as low cost genome wide scanning, coupled with population based research which are able to link genetic variants with common complex diseases such as cancer and heart disease, suggest a very different future. These advances and their likely implications for policy and regulation have been recently reviewed by the House of Lords Science and Technology Subcommittee Enquiry on Genomic Medicine whose report is due to be published in the spring of 2009. The future impact of genomics on policy forms the subject of the final session of this meeting.