Friday Links

Two exciting-looking new science blogging collectives have been announced this week. The Public Library of Science launched a new blogging collective, including personal genomics blogger Misha Angrist, and the Guardian newspaper has launched its Guardian Science Blogs network, including Dr Evan Harris, ex-MP for Oxford West and long time supporter of the role of science in public policy. I’m pretty excited about these new blogs, but it does stand to increase my RSS load significantly. [LJ]

In this month’s issue of European Journal of Human Genetics, Yang, Visscher and Wray contribute to the discussion around the aetiology of common complex diseases.  They demonstrate that the existence of a large number of sporadic cases (instances where a patient has no first, second, or third-degree relatives with the disease) is not incompatible with a polygenic model of disease.  A little less hot-off-the-press are two opinion pieces on genetic testing regulation from the August issue of Nature.  Arthur Beaudet argues that stringent government regulation should be applied to genotyping/sequencing, and interpretation should be the exclusive domain of the medical profession.  Gail Javitt takes a different view, arguing that genetic tests to be treated in the same way as other medical tests and that the level of regulation imposed should be determined by medical relevance of the outcome. [KIM]

Finally, Procreation News; our very own Daniel MacArthur and Ilana Fisher have recently given birth to a baby boy (the picture to the left may be a little out of date). Daniel made the announcement on Twitter, and also had this to say:

After careful inspection, I’ve decided that my six-day-old son is the most remarkable human being to have ever lived.

Due to double blinding, neither we nor Daniel know whether he has an actual or placebo baby, so we can’t yet assess the significance of this claim. Watch this space! [LJ]