[Hplusroadmap] Fwd: [wta-talk] Profile of WTA benefactor Dan Stoicescu

[Bryan Bishop]

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: [wta-talk] Profile of WTA benefactor Dan Stoicescu
Date: Tuesday 04 March 2008
From: "Hughes, James J." <James.Hughes at trincoll.edu>
To: "World Transhumanist Association Discussion List" 
<wta-talk at transhumanism.org>


"...he describes himself as a 'transhumanist' who believes that life can
be extended through nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, as well
as diet and lifestyle adaptations."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/health/research/04geno.html

The New York Times
Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By

March 4, 2008
The DNA Age
Gene Map Becomes a Luxury Item
By AMY HARMON

On a cold day in January, Dan Stoicescu, a millionaire living in
Switzerland, became the second person in the world to buy the full
sequence of his own genetic code.

He is also among a relatively small group of individuals who could
afford the $350,000 price tag.

Mr. Stoicescu is the first customer of Knome, a Cambridge-based company
that has promised to parse his genetic blueprint by spring. A Chinese
executive has signed on for the same service with Knome's partner, the
Beijing Genomics Institute, the company said.

Scientists have so far unraveled only a handful of complete human
genomes, all financed by governments, foundations and corporations in
the name of medical research. But as the cost of genome sequencing goes
from stratospheric to merely very expensive, it is piquing the interest
of a new clientele.

"I'd rather spend my money on my genome than a Bentley or an airplane,"
said Mr. Stoicescu, 56, a biotechnology entrepreneur who retired two
years ago after selling his company. He says he will check discoveries
about genetic disease risk against his genome sequence daily, "like a
stock portfolio."

But while money may buy a full readout of the six billion chemical units
in an individual's genome, biologists say the superrich will have to
wait like everyone else to learn how the small variations in their
sequence influence appearance, behavior, abilities, disease
susceptibility and other traits.

"I was in someone's Bentley once - nice car," said James D. Watson, the
co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, whose genome was sequenced last
year by a company that donated the $1.5 million in costs to demonstrate
its technology. "Would I rather have my genome sequenced or have a
Bentley? Uh, toss up."

He would probably pick the genome, Dr. Watson said, because it could
reveal a disease-risk gene that one had passed on to one's children,
though in his case, it did not. What is needed, he said, is a "Chevrolet
genome" that is affordable for everyone.

Biologists have mixed feelings about the emergence of the genome as a
luxury item. Some worry that what they have dubbed "genomic elitism"
could sour the public on genetic research that has long promised better,
individualized health care for all. But others see the boutique genome
as something like a $20 million tourist voyage to space - a necessary
rite of passage for technology that may soon be within the grasp of the
rest of us.

"We certainly don't want a world where there's a great imbalance of
access to comprehensive genetic tests," said Richard A. Gibbs, director
of the human genome sequencing center at Baylor College of Medicine.
"But to the extent that this can be seen as an idiosyncratic exercise of
curious individuals who can afford it, it could be quite a positive
phenomenon."

It was the stream of offers from wealthy individuals to pay the Harvard
laboratory of George M. Church for their personal genome sequences that
led Dr. Church to co-found Knome last year (most people pronounce it
"nome," though he prefers "know-me").

"It was distracting for an academic lab," Dr. Church said. "But it made
me think it could be a business."

Scientists say they need tens of thousands of genome sequences to be
made publicly available to begin to make sense of human variation.

Knome, however, expects many of its customers to insist on keeping their
dearly bought genomes private, and provides a decentralized data storage
system for that purpose.

Mr. Stoicescu said he worried about being seen as self-indulgent (though
he donates much more each year to philanthropic causes), egotistical
(for obvious reasons) or stupid (the cost of the technology, he knows,
is dropping so fast that he would have certainly paid much less by
waiting a few months).

But he agreed to be identified to help persuade others to participate.
With only four complete human genome sequences announced by scientists
around the world - along with the Human Genome Project, which finished
assembling a genome drawn from several individuals at a cost of about
$300 million in 2003 - each new one stands to add considerably to the
collective knowledge.

"I view it as a kind of sponsorship," he said. "In a way you can also be
part of this adventure, which I believe is going to change a lot of
things."

Mr. Stoicescu, who has a Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry, was born in
Romania and lived in the United States in the early 1990s before
founding Sindan, an oncology products company that he ran for 15 years.
Now living with his wife and 12-year-old son in a village outside
Geneva, he describes himself as a "transhumanist" who believes that life
can be extended through nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, as
well as diet and lifestyle adaptations. His genome sequence, he reasons,
might give him a better indication of just what those should be. Last
fall, Mr. Stoicescu paid $1,000 to get a glimpse of his genetic code
from deCODE Genetics. That service, and a similar one offered by
23andMe, looks at close to a million nucleotides on the human genome
where DNA is known to differ among people.

But Mr. Stoicescu was intrigued by the idea of a more complete picture.
"It is only a part of the truth," he said. "Having the full sequence
decoded you can be closer to reality."

How close is a matter of much debate. Knome is using a technology that
reads the genome in short fragments that can be tricky to assemble. All
of the existing sequencing methods have a margin of error, and the
fledgling industry has no agreed-on quality standards.

Knome is not the only firm in the private genome business. Illumina, a
sequencing firm in San Diego, plans to sell whole genome sequencing to
the "rich and famous market" this year, said its chief executive, Jay
Flatley. If competition drives prices down, the personal genome may
quickly lose its exclusivity. The nonprofit X Prize Foundation is
offering $10 million to the first group to sequence 100 human genomes in
10 days, for $10,000 or less per genome. The federal government is
supporting technology development with an eye to a $1,000 genome in the
next decade.

But for now, Knome's prospective customers are decidedly high-end. The
company has been approached by hedge fund managers, Hollywood executives
and an individual from the Middle East who could be contacted only
through a third party, said Jorge Conde, Knome's chief executive.

"I feel like everyone's going to have to get it done at some point, so
why not be one of the first?" said Eugene Katchalov, 27, a money manager
in Manhattan who has met with Mr. Conde twice.

Mr. Stoicescu, who wants to create an open database of genomic
information seeded with his own sequence, hopes others will soon join
him.



A few days after he wired his $175,000 deposit to the company, a Knome
associate flew in from Cambridge to meet him at a local clinic.

"What the heck am I doing?" Mr. Stoicescu recalls wondering. "And how
many children in Africa might have been fed?"

Then he offered up his arm and gave her three test tubes of his blood.

_______________________________________________
wta-talk mailing list
wta-talk at transhumanism.org
http://www.transhumanism.org/mailman/listinfo/wta-talk

-------------------------------------------------------
________________________________________
Bryan Bishop
http://heybryan.org/