Unifactorial models are not appropriate for multifactorial disease

BMJ 1999;318:1353 ( 15 May )

Letters

Unifactorial models are not appropriate for multifactorial disease

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ Berger recently discussed the ethical problems of selling Icelandic pedigrees so that genes predisposing to commondisorders could be patented.¹ The technical problem "will itwork" is also of interest. The belief that multifactorial disorderscan be analysed by unifactorial methods underlies the ancestralapproach ofdeCODE.

The company claims, with justification, that it has "formidable capabilities in statistical genetics and uses state of theart techniques of statistical analysis. Since deCODE has accessto a large collection of families with extensive pedigrees andfamily history, the company is able to employ a variety of statisticalmethods to simplify the search for disease genes. This is particularlyimportant given the competitive nature of large scale geneticanalysis."

However, little is said of what these techniques are, or the basis for the statement that "300 000 genotypes a month is enoughto allow the company to map 12 complex diseases per. . . [Full text of this article]

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