Dave Curtis

You may be wondering why I didn't want to dance with you. Probably you weren't wondering at all and didn't think anything of it but if you were then here is the reason. No, I won't dance with you because I'm too drunk. No, I won't dance with you because I'm too sober. No, I won't dance with you because I'm too sweaty. No, I won't dance with you because there are too many people on the dance floor. No, I won't dance with you because there aren't enough people on the dance floor. No, I won't dance with you because this track is half way through already. No, I won't dance with you because this track is just starting and I can't tell yet whether I can dance to it. No, I won't dance with you because the music is too fast. No, I won't dance with you because the music is too slow. No, I won't dance with you because the music is too obscure. No, I won't dance with you because the music is too ...

There are two things which the government has got completely wrong in its attempts to deal with concerns about PIP breast implants. It is fuelling anxiety rather than alleviating it and its notions of the responsibilities of private providers are muddled and incorrect. Everybody knows that health treatment is only provided when clinically indicated. Never before has an indication for an operation been simply "the patient is worried". So it makes no sense at all to simultaneously say that PIP implants are safe but if a patient is worried they will be removed. Why remove something which isn't dangerous? This massively mixed message could hardly be more unhelpful. From everything I can see of the science so far there is no evidence that PIP implants present any higher risk than any other kind, in spite of being described in scarey terms such "industrial". Possibly they have a somewhat higher risk of rupture but that could be dealt with as and when and anyway the ...

I'm on my way back from the 2011 World Congress in Psychiatric Genetics, so here's a brief subjective account of some aspects of where the field seems to be. Methodology Results from sequencing studies, particularly whole-exome sequencing, are starting to trickle through. They are likely to turn into a flood over the next year. Sequencing studies carry the promise of finally being able to detect rare DNA changes having a really major effect on disease risk. Some concerns exist that sequencing studies confined to the exome may miss important mutations in non-coding regions. It remains to be seen how severe this problem will be in practice. Sequencing the genome rather than the exome is more expensive and yields vast amounts of data which may be difficult to interpret. Even with exome sequencing, a major challenge will be how to recognize which are likely to be disease-relevant mutations among the many thousands of variants each subject will possess. With sequencing studies w...

OK, yes, I know that genome-wide association studies have identified some important genetic effects but there are some important downsides too. I truthfully do not know whether the benefits have outweighed the costs. Why am I saying this? (None of this is supposed to be original. Conversely, I am not going to go to the trouble to find the myriad of people who may have said the same thing first. So sue me. I think that's what blogs are for?) Here are some pertinent points: Nobody believes anything if it's not in a GWAS Studies which would previously have been judged to give perfectly respectable evidence to implicate a candidate gene are nowadays completely ignored because the stupid GWAS missed said gene. People don't believe a candidate gene study which yields a corrected p value of 0.001 derived from 20 markers but they do believe a GWAS which produces one p value of 10^-8. There is no logic in this position. But a lot of people take this attitude. At a recent confe...

Maybe I could use a space to put things up which will be searchable and linkable and which people can comment on. I'll try posting things here and see how it all goes.