Kaiser Plans DNA Database
Kaiser Permanente as early as this year plans to ask as many as two million adults in Northern California for DNA samples to create a database to help identify genetic and environmental links to various diseases, the San Francisco Business Times reports.
A schedule has not been set, but Kaiser hopes to launch the program this year, according to Kevin McCormack, a spokesperson for Kaiser's research institute.
Funding for the research project, called Genes, Environment and Health, still is uncertain, McCormack said.
Larry Thompson, a spokesperson for NIH and the National Human Genome Research Institute, said that those organizations will not fund Kaiser's proposed study but might collaborate in the future (Rauber/Levine, San Francisco Business Times, 6/19).