Gene Found That Raises Child Asthma Risk By Half according to one of the largest studies into the disease.

[andresf91 0]

I found this piece of news via Digg.
My younger brother has asthma, and the improvements in health care coming from this discovery would be really helpful I think... though I have my share of suspicion about how long that would take to be accesible in the third world - it seems like the kind of cutting-edge technology that would only be available in the rich countries.

[sheepdog 10]

LOL, you mean rich countries like Mexico????Because if they had it in the USA, nobody but maybe Bill Gates could afford it.Anyway, discoving the gene that causes asmatha is a long way from a cure. Not much you can actually do about genetics, except breed them out, and since if you start discusing the intentional breeding to improve humans you get called Hitler and rocks thrown at you. Maybe they are doing some work along the lines of gene splicing and that sort of thing, but with all the advances in genetics, we still don't know enough to get in there and start playing around with removing genes from peoples dna. What if the asmatha gene is tied in with the gene that controls some other important body function, like the automatic reflex to breath, or the ability to grow teeth or some such other thing. We just don't know enough yet to go fooling with mother nature.