JOHN NEWTON, the newly appointed chief executive of the UK Biobank project, impressed MPs when he spoke at a recent meeting of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee. In the long-term, the project promises to be the largest, most comprehensive population study of its kind in the world (快猫短视频, 10 May, p 25). Eventually up to half a million British volunteers aged between 45 and 69 will be involved. Britain, with its well-established National Health Service and various public-health statistics agencies, is well placed to undertake this sort of project.
The aim is to provide scientists with the kind of information that they need to explore the roles of nature and nurture in health and disease. The Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council and the Department of Health support it. It will help to unravel the origins of disease and enable researchers to devise new treatments and prevention strategies. Once pilot studies are complete, it anticipates recruiting volunteers in 2004.
It is not the first population project of its kind. Numerous high-profile studies of the roles of genes and environment in disease are either planned or in progress. To mention two, there鈥檚 an Icelandic study using records stretching back to the Vikings, and the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition.
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The Biobank plans were welcomed by John Sulston, former director of the Wellcome Trust鈥檚 Sanger Institute, which spearheaded Britain鈥檚 contribution to the Human Genome Project. 鈥淚 strongly support this initiative, building as it does on the public resources of the British National Health Service and the Human Genome Project, for the good of all,鈥� he said. I say amen to his judgement. More information can be found at .
SCOTTISH Natural Heritage said earlier this year that it would test Scottish bats for the dreaded lyssavirus, which can cause rabies. It went as far as to draw up a contract to test 300 individuals of four bat species at 30 roosts in Scotland, starting in caves in Angus. It was here that the late and distinguished researcher David McRae worked and was thought to have contracted the rabies that killed him. I鈥檓 told by amateur bat workers that under the contract, scientists at the Central Science Laboratory (CSL) in York were to take blood samples, which they would then pass on to virologists at the Veterinary Laboratories Agency (VLA) in Weybridge, Surrey.
So far, so good. If this was to be a pilot project for the whole of Britain it was eminently sensible. But no further progress was achieved. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) shied away from accepting the tenders submitted by the CSL and VLA.
A bat enthusiast tells me that testing bats for antibodies to lyssaviruses is now to be restricted to Lancashire and the South Coast. In Lancashire a Daubenton鈥檚 bat bit a rehabilitation handler last year. It later tested positive for European bat lyssavirus II. The South Coast falls within the distribution of the serotine bat 鈥� the main vector of European bat lyssavirus I. But sadly, there will be no sampling in Scotland, where McRae鈥檚 death was the first in a hundred years from rabies virus contracted locally.
I鈥檓 dismayed that ministers couldn鈥檛 agree with the CSL and VLA on what is clearly a problem, particularly in view of recently heightened public concern over animal disease. The paltry cost of the project was only 0.0001 per cent of what was spent shattering the Iraqi environment.
