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> This sort of thing is exactly like preventative whole body MRI scans. It's very noisy, very overwhelming data that is only statistically useful in cases we're not even sure about yet. To use it in a treatment program is witchcraft at this moment, probably doing more harm than good.

The child of a friend of mine has PTEN-Hamartom-Tumor-Syndrom, a tendency to develop tumors throughout life due to a mutation in the PTEN gene. The poor child gets whole body MRIs and other check-ups every half year. As someone in biological data science, I always tell the parents how difficult it will be to prevent false positives, because we don't have a lot of data on routine full body check-ups on healty people. We just know the huge spectrum on how healthy/ok tissue looks like.



Hopefully gene therapy can fix this sort of problem.


is it even possible for gene therapy to just rewrite all the existing DNA in a body? can't you only do that to cells that are dividing or whatever?


They've managed to treat sickle cell.

>CRISPR/Cas9 can be directed to cut DNA in targeted areas, enabling the ability to accurately edit (remove, add, or replace) DNA where it was cut. The modified blood stem cells are transplanted back into the patient where they engraft (attach and multiply) within the bone marrow...

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-appr...


They did it by killing all the normal blood stem cells in the body. This is difficult to say the least for something that is completely systemic




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