World's most expensive CDs: $500,000 a pop!

[peter2002]

If you are tired of buying $18 CDs, (unless you download off of you know who), well you better save, steal, or borrow to get this baby.

For $500,000, J. Craig Venter, the former CEO of Celera that decoded the human genome first, will map your genes and burn a copy onto a CD. That way you will know which diseases you are prone to get or not get, and maybe help find a cure or better treatments for various diseases.

Peter

http://www.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/10/06/genes.on.cd.ap/index.html

[Mr. Anderson]

Go in for a full body scan and then get your genes mapped - wow, this is big, it will have huge impact once they get the cost down to 1000. But I wonder if eventually, this won't be necessary? That a doctor would have the means to do it in his office/lab himself in 20 years.....

[Durandal7]

I agree duke, give it 10 years or so and you'll have a $5 copayment.

[King Cobra]

Have any of you seen the documentary 2020? Even a few clips of it? It discusses that by then all the genetic codes will be figured out and people will be able to find out how genetically healthy they are.

Sure, it's great, but what if you go to a doctor then and find out that you have a 75 percent of getting cancer at age 40? Or you have a 40% chance of a heart attack at age 35? I'm making this up, but that is the basis of some of the downsides to this technology.

[Mr. Anderson]

That was one of the big controversies, then you might end up with a higher insurance premium or not being accepted for health insurance. Its not yet been settled, so who knows what's going to happen. But if you haven't seen it, go rent Gatica, a very cool money set in the future where genetic preferences exist and you can pick the very best genes for your children....great story.

D