Genealogy certainly matters for multifactorial genetic disease

BMJ 1999;319:578 ( 28 August )

Letters

Genealogy certainly matters for multifactorial genetic disease

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

EDITOR $---$ We have some difficulties understanding Edwards's letter about the genetic mapping in Iceland.¹ His first paragraphsuggested that it was not about ethical or political issues, butthe last paragraph was. His collaborations with some of our localcritics who have been doing research on the genetics of schizophreniamay explainthis.

What is clear, however, is that Edwards takes the rather narrow view that genealogical information is useful only for diseasesthat can be fitted with unifactorial models. We disagree. Dataare the fuel of all scientific investigations, and in the caseof genetic studies it is intuitively obvious that phenotypic,genetic, and genealogical data are all relevant. All methods forfinding susceptibility genes with anonymous markers (even thosethat do not assume unifactorial aetiology) involve searching forgenomic regions that patientsshare.

Apart from power considerations, one aspect that distinguishes the various approaches is resolution. For . . . [Full text of this article]