Rare Mutation Kills Off Gene Responsible For Diabetes

Re:Rare Mutation Kills Off Gene Responsible For Diabetes by JumpCrisscross on Monday March 03, 2014 @03:25AM (#7332637)

>deCODE Genetics, a company with data on genes and diseases for the entire population of Iceland. The American drug company, Amgen, bought deCODE and its valuable genetic database.

Based on Iceland's reaction to its financial crisis in 2008, I would not have expected such a dataset to be privately held.

It seems in 1998 the Icelandic Parliament "permitted public bidding for the right of a company to create" a "population-wide genomic biobank by collecting data from the entire population of Iceland". It then granted deCODE "the right to create this database after the company made a successful bid to do so" [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCODE_genetics#History

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Re:Rare Mutation Kills Off Gene Responsible For Diabetes by kakoni on Monday March 03, 2014 @04:35AM (#7332828)

Wasnt expecting this either. And now the whole database is owned by multi-national pharmaceutical.

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Re:Rare Mutation Kills Off Gene Responsible For Diabetes by dagurp on Monday March 03, 2014 @05:54AM (#7333064)

There was a lot of discussion about the whole thing when the bid was made by deCODE. When they got the permission, people were allowed to opt out, but the general attitude towards the company was far too positive at the time.

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