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Your Body is trying to Destroy You! Genetic Mapping Can Help Save You

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Cancer is probably one of the most dreaded words in the English language. It is a disease where cells becomes abnormal and start to divide uncontrollably and from tumors. A frightening thing to consider is that some forms of cancer do not show side effects until the advanced stages. When the disease is severe, the treatment is also severe and sometimes chemotherapy and radiation do not work. However, there is hope for a better system of cancer treatment that has shown to have a higher chance of succeeding provided by genetic mapping. Now, there is an option to have tumors genetically mapped so that cancer treatments can be more personalized. Also, because of genetic mapping doctors are making connections and have a greater understanding …show more content…

This has directly lead to the cost of genome sequencing to sharp decline. Before the project the cost to map out a human genome was one billion dollars, after the project was completed it had to decline to ten to 50 million dollars. Now, ten years after the completion of the Human Genome Project the cost to map out a human genome is only three to five thousand dollars. ("Quantitative Advances Since the Human Genome Project (HGP)") This number is predicted to keep declining as well, in part because of company competition and the increase popularity of genetic mapping. Another reason is because the National Human Genome Research Institute has new goals to expand the use of genetic mapping which includes finding ways to lower the cost of genome sequencing to less than a thousand dollars. It would be a huge feat but a goal the Institute could manage to realize in the next ten years. ("Decade of Genomics NHGRI Celebrates 10th Anniversary")
There was a little unforeseen additional to the National Institutes of Health, which is the Cancer Genome Atlas. The whole goal of this program is to use genetic mapping to its full potential when it comes to cancer research, diagnosis, treatment and prevention. The National Cancer Institute parented with the National Human Genome Research Institute, to conduct a wide spread, large scale genome sequencing on over twenty different types of cancer.

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