February 1, 2012

When It Comes to Your Genes, How Much is Too Much Information?

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/blueridgekitties/3883646277/">BlueRidgeKitties</a>/Flickr

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Would you want to know if you are at risk of developing a life-threatening disease? What if it’s totally incurable? What if there’s only a 5 percent chance it would even happen in your lifetime? On Tuesday, an ethics group at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge launched a site designed to wrestle with exactly these types of moral questions quickly cropping up due to the increased prevalence of gene sequencing.

If you are a volunteer in a medical study, for example, and have handed over a spit sample of DNA, the survey tries to determine what responsibility researchers have to let you know if they discover something sticky you may not know about along the way. The survey (chock full of images of “scientists” very seriously pipetting) is designed to crowd-source the data collection process in hopes of gauging broad public attitudes towards genomic testing; the eventual goal is to help inform emerging public policies on the issue. And don’t worry if you don’t consider yourself super science-literate—the questions are all designed to hit pretty close to home. The harder part will be figuring out how you really feel about knowing what’s in the cards for you.

How much would you really like to know? Visit http://www.genomethics.org to fill out the survey.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

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So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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