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Our healthcare future? It’s all in the genes

Leading scientist shares genetic roadmap with annual meeting crowd


J. Craig Venter speaksIf J. Craig Venter had listened in class, the world might be an entirely different place right now.

Venter is the man who lead a team credited with publishing the first map of the human genome — the entire sequence of genes in humans — in the 2001 edition of the journal Science. But had he taken his graduate school lessons at face value back in the 1970s, he might never have pursued such revolutionary
science.

“I was told it would be hard to come up with something new in biology because everything was already known,” Venter told the crowd at this year’s annual meeting of Community Hospital Foundation and the Auxiliary at the Monterey Conference Center.

Three decades later, Venter made his groundbreaking discovery — essentially, a fast and accurate method of deciphering long stretches of DNA. And now, the possibilities are, literally, endless.

Genetics could play a role in everything from food production to homeland security.

“Natural tomatoes are small, little green things the size of my thumb,” he said, addressing the controversy over genetically modified food. “Just about everything we eat has been genetically modified, but it’s happened over hundreds of years.”

As for homeland security and its connection to the study of genetics, Venter said it might one day be possible to check the hulls of ships to determine where those ships originated, by testing and determining the genetic codes of the organisms attached to the hull.

Certainly, the study of genetics — which Venter describes as trying to put together a giant jigsaw puzzle — will play a vast role in healthcare in the next decade.

“The future of applying genomics is in preventing disease,” Venter said. “The only way we’re going to lower the cost of healthcare is by detecting diseases early, to go in the direction of trying to predict risk and prevent disease.”

In other annual meeting news, Ted Balestreri, Laurie Benjamin, and H. James Griggs were named to the Community Hospital Foundation Board of Trustees, while Beverly C. Hamilton was elected to a second term. All will be serving three-year terms ending in 2008. Other members of the 2005 board are: Ian Arnof; George W. Couch, III; Stephen M. Dart; Davis Factor, Jr.; Barry Gendelman, M.D.; Kathleen Hicks; Jay Hudson; George E. Miller, Jr. M.D.; Steven J. Packer, M.D.; The Hon. Leon E. Panetta; Geraldine C. Taplin, M.D.; and David H. Watts.