

Peter Thiel's Startup Class 16 Notes: Decoding Ourselves - DanielRibeiro
http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/24253160557/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-16-decoding

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SudarshanP
I was surprised to see that an entrepreneur like Peter Thiel could just go on
stage and openly talk about possibilities life extension at a top university
like Stanford. Is it common in the Silicon Valley to just go around talking
about life extension as an "important business opportunity"? I have heard
Aubrey de Grey talking about escape velocity of longevity etc. But I am
strangely happy as well startled that one could just walk into a class room
and talk about life extension. You guys must be living in paradise ;-). I
admire that liberty more than the feasibility or not of life extension itself.

~~~
nostromo
(Assuming you're not based in the US...)

This has become a very common topic of conversation in the US (not just
Silicon Valley) among engineers, tech-enthusiasts, and academics in the past
decade or so. I think it has a lot to do with Ray Kurzweil's "The Age of
Spiritual Machines" -- at least that was around the time I noticed even
regular people talking about this subject without fear of being labeled an
eccentric.

There are still communities where this topic is not openly discussed. A friend
in the medical field told me once it's taboo to talk about radical life
extension in many sectors of the healthcare industry -- which I find very sad.
There are also religious communities in the US that this doesn't sit well
with.

Overall I'd say we're not far away from mainstream acceptance of these ideas
-- even among the medical establishment and religious communities. As for top
universities -- this has been a topic of conversation for quite some time.

~~~
SudarshanP
I am from Bangalore. If I went around telling this... they'll probably label
me a crackpot. Even the geeks around me wud probably consider this too crazy
to be real. I will check out and see how the world around me reacts.

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frisco
Thiel is misinterpreting the increase in lifespan data. It's a famous dataset,
but it's intepreted in terms of decreasing infant mortality -- not an increase
in the average upper limits. Over the last couple hundred years, the average
western lifespan if you've made it to age 40 has increased by about ten years.
However, infant and childhood mortality (and death due to childbirth in
someone's twenties) have gone through the floor, leading to the graph Thiel is
using here.

The ~6 years of lifespan gained at age 65 since the 60s largely has to do with
basic geriatric care (60 years ago, a fall leading to a broken hip would kill
you at age 70) rather than true "life extension". Also, many therapies for
things like cancer at that age can keep you alive, but quality of life is
another thing entirely; and then it still kills you.

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burrisj
It seems to me that the most immediate implication of inexpensive genome
sequencing (23andMe et al) is the ability to tailor an individual’s medical
care based on their genetic information.

America’s legal system has miles of catching up to do before any genome-
informed personalized medicine solutions can come to market. 2008’s Genetic
Information Nondiscrimination Act was necessary to ensure that biomedical
research continues to advance and so that patients are comfortable availing
themselves to genetic diagnostic tests.

There are really unresolved issues: (1) who should ultimately have access to
the results of genetic testing? (2) when should a physician divulge
information regarding patients’ liabilities for certain diseases? (3) who can
decide that someone’s genome should be sequenced?

Re: 1 In the 90s the Icelandic government contracted DeCODE Genetics as the
monopolistic provider of genome testing in order to prevent fragmentation in
genetic data libraries, so as to aggregate more genomes to better inform
resource allocation for drug production. But in the wrong hands, the
government could put this information towards policy measures that might
vaguely resemble eugenics-based methods of control. There are pros and cons
that have yet to be decided.

Re: 2 Supposing that physicians have access to patients' genomes, the matter
arises of if and when to divulge information regarding their liability for
certain diseases. The default should be to give the patient the right to any
amount of information. The actual amount of this information to be shared by
the physician, however, should be determined on a case-by-case basis through a
conversation between the physician and the patient in question. The true
litmus test for this question is the net benefit to the patient. Supposing
that a patient is at low risk for a disease and the treatment for this disease
would be expensive and time-consuming, a physician would most likely be less
inclined to divulge this liability, but there are still no standards of
disclosure- we’ll see what happens.

Re: 3 We’ve already banned insurers and employers from mandating genetic
testing, so the closest analogue seems to be the relationship between a parent
or guardian and a child. There is precedent that caretakers in a better
position to make decisions for a minor or impaired individual should be given
the ability to do so. Still, the issue remains of how parents will react to
the results of testing. It’s likely that sequencing a baby's genome will
eventually become a legal requirement for newborns much like a birth
certificate, but until that point the question of who decides and pays for
genome sequencing remains.

All things considered, I say fuck it- the legal infrastructure will catch up
with personalized medicine and the genetic testing companies and drug
manufacturers already making use of the information will be in the best
position to take advantage of it. Paddle early.

~~~
Cushman
The issue I have with all this is-- in what sense is my DNA not public
information?

1) Intellectual property in general is considered to be things that I, you
know, _thought_ of; my genetic code is the result of a physical process
between my parents that I had absolutely no input into. If anyone owns it,
they do. Of course, it was a derivative product of _their_ genetic code, which
they really had no claim to in the first place.

2) I leave complete copies of my DNA lying around everywhere I go, and on
everything I touch. Maybe not in quantities that can be sequenced, yet, but
it's there. Granted that I have ownership (and then some) over my own body,
does that really continue to apply to the bits I discard in your foyer without
noticing or caring?

I understand there are political issues that transcend this, but it feels like
a case where politics is fighting a losing battle against physics.

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salimmadjd
OT: one of the guets said, "Personal referrals are very important for
recruiting. We try and get each engineer to refer 2 people. 2^n scales very
well. You get great people, but also get to stay under the radar"

I don't understand how he gets 2^n. anyone else?

~~~
evmar
n here is "generation". Start with one engineer, n=0. They refer 2, n=1. They
each refer 2, referring a total of 4, n=2. Etc.

(It works out such that the total number of people follows the same curve.
Think of the total number of engineers as (2^n)-1: following the same example
above, one engineer is then n=1, three total is n=2, seven total is n=3.)

~~~
salimmadjd
Okay, the generations makes sense. Thanks!

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mgl
Ask HN: What is the best introductory bioinformatics book for a data mining
researcher, so that he can understand the practical biotech applications of
data mining algorithms he already know?

~~~
Dn_Ab
I too was recently looking for how someone with good machine learning
experience could contribute. I signed up for the pharma, neurobiology and
genomics coursera courses.

My research also pointed me to the following books. The first two I got
because they were highly recommended and most fit my interests.

Genes, Proteins and Computers

A Practical Introduction to the Simulation of Molecular Systems

\--------------------------

##Ungot

An Introduction to Bioinformatics Algorithms

Bioinformatics : Machine learning approaches

Computational Genome Analysis,

Understanding Bioinformatics by Marketa Zvelebil

Biological Sequence Analysis, Durbin et al

Bioinformatics by David Mount :

Statistical Methods in Bioinformatics Warren J. Ewens, Gregory R. Grant

Bioinformatics Basics: Applications in Biological Science and Medicine

Time Warps, String Edits, and Macromolecules: The Theory and Practice of
Sequence Comparison

Understanding Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics for Dummies

Molecular Evolution

Bioinformatics and Molecular Evolution

Algorithms on Strings, Tree's and Sequences

Bioinformatics - A Practical Guide to the analysis of Genes and Protein

The Art of Molecular Dynamics Simulation

Protein Bioinformatics: An Algorithmic Approach to Sequence and Structure
Analysis

'Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics

~~~
mgl
Great, many thanks!

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kylebrown
I was coming of age just after the internet bubble burst (graduated high
school in 2002). I entered college as a biochem major and so did my peers, a
couple of whom are now biomed grad students. Thinking back, I remember a lot
of biotech-topia talk, but it seems to have waned in recent years (against a
wave of social-mobile).

Just one anecdote, but I notice a cycle between tech-social and tech-bio. Time
for the pendulum to swing again?

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mindcruzer
Here (<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=1000-genome>) is a
recent article in Scientific American regarding sequencing a genome for <=
$1000. It's pretty cool how it works. Most current genome sequencers tell
bases apart by different wavelengths of light, but this one takes a completely
different approach and measures pH changes.

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richardburton
Dear Blake,

Thank you.

Richard

