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Monday, Nov 23, 2009
Going once, going twice, gone! Estonia's gene pool has been sold to the bidder in the front row.
Mar 10, 2003 | Oil shale, peat, phosphorite, clay, limestone, sand, dolomite, arable land and sea mud -- those are the natural resources that the CIA World Factbook 2002 attributes to Estonia, a small Eastern European republic on the Baltic Sea.
In the next edition, the American spooks should update their list ... with an entry for human DNA.
The newest resources "discovered" in Estonia are the genes of its 1.4 million citizens. The country's government and a Silicon Valley start-up called EGeen International are treating the Estonian gene pool as a commodity to be exploited for medical research and profit.
EGeen owns the exclusive commercial rights to data from the Estonian Gene Bank Project. In March the bank will begin a full-scale effort to collect blood samples and medical histories that will help scientists understand Estonians from the inside out.
In a pilot effort, the project has already collected 1,000 such samples and histories from the three counties of Tartu, West Viru and Saare. Now, the goal is to persuade the rest of country's inhabitants that it's in the best interests of them, their descendants and their countrymen to be decoded for science.
"About 10 percent have said: 'No way!' They're not going to participate," says Kalev Kask, the CEO of EGeen International, which is based in Redwood City, Calif. "About 30 percent are uncertain or need more information, and the rest are positive. About 30 percent are firm believers."
With the human genome mapped, DNA information potentially has enormous value to medicine. National efforts to capitalize on that demand, by taking a kind of genetic census, are underway in several countries, including Iceland and Britain. Geneticists and drug companies will use the data in an effort to determine the genetic makeup of everything from high blood pressure to anxiety. The ultimate goal: tailoring drugs and treatments to your personal genetic profile.
Estonia is a test case for understanding how turning the genetic stock of a poor country into a marketable commodity is fraught with social and ethical challenges. To pick just one brave new possibility: Will "bad genes" join gender, race and class as a potential source of discrimination? Estonia has even enacted legislation to address gene policy problems before they happen. As it pushes forward in data-mining its own citizens' DNA, the country is asking: What rights do people have over their own genes?
