US Wants to Open Consulate to Reach Northern Nigerians

anh ngu | summer school registration |

U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria Terence P. McCulley (file photo)

Photo: AP

The U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria Terence McCulley says the United States is looking at expanding its outreach in the West African nation's Muslim north by opening a consulate in the restive northern city of Kano.

Nigeria, which is divided between a largely Christian south and a mostly Muslim north, has seen escalating sectarian violence in recent months. President Goodluck Jonathan has declared a state of emergency in many parts of the north in response to the unrest.  But the attacks have continued.

Speaking with journalists in Lagos on a teleconference Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador Terence McCulley says opening a consulate in Kano will bring a better relationship with the Muslim north.

"We don't have enough of a presence in the north, said McCulley. "We need to open a consulate in Kano so that we can continue our public outreach, so we can organize programs to explain American policy to the populations in the north."

The United States once had a consulate in Kaduna, but closed it when it opened its Abuja Embassy.  McCulley says opening a consulate takes time but he hopes to have one open in the next few years.

Ambassador McCulley said the United States understands the importance of addressing Nigerians' underlying grievances in the north, such as under development in education, sanitation, clean water, infrastructure and power.  He said the U.S. recognizes that the extremist ideology propagated by militants groups like Boko Haram hurts hurting fellow Muslims along with all Nigerians.

Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sacrilegious" in Hausa, the main language of the north, says it is working to implement Islamic law across Nigeria - Africa's most populous country.

In response to a question about U.S. security interests in the region, McCulley ruled out the idea of deploying U.S. security forces in northern Nigeria. But he says the United States is providing support to Nigeria in terms of better coordination and sharing of information in the security arena.

Theo www.voanews.com

Study Highlights Limits to Gene-Based Medicine

internationalscholarship | summer school registration |

A new study casts doubt on the ability of advances in genetic science to predict whether people will get, or not get, a particular disease. The researchers stress that genes play only a partial role in causing illness, and so genetic information can provide only limited guidance on prevention or treatment.

Photo: AP

Genes play a partial role in illness, so genetic information can provide only limited guidance on prevention or treatment.

As genetic sequencing becomes cheaper and cheaper, there is a lot of excitement about how knowing our own, individual genes will give us a road map of our future health prospects.

Not so fast, says Bert Vogelstein of Johns Hopkins University. "For the vast majority of individuals, whole-genome sequencing will never be a crystal ball that can reliably predict future health."

The problem is that disease can also be caused by environmental factors, like air pollution, or by random, unpredictable genetic mutations.

So for most people, being told that they have a genetic predisposition to disease when there isn't already a family history, is not really very useful information. "What is useful?" Vogelstein asks. "For example, suppose your risk for disease is one percent, and the testing increases it by five percent over that one percent. That's only 1.05 percent - not a significant difference."

That said, Vogelstein says some people may gain a lot from genetic testing. "For individuals with a strong family history of disease, whole-genome sequencing may well become extremely valuable."

To assess the value of whole-genome sequencing, Vogelstein and his colleagues used information about 55,000 pairs of identical twins - who start life with identical DNA, but often have very different medical histories as they age. By analyzing the differences in the medical history of each set of twin, the scientists were able to calculate the power of genes to predict future disease.

As the cost of this sort of genetic testing comes down, the companies that offer it are increasingly selling their service directly to consumers. Vogelstein and other scientists talk about the importance of having the results interpreted by a family physician or genetic counselor.

University of Pennsylvania epidemiologist Timothy Rebbeck, who was not involved in this research, puts it this way, "You wouldn't want to unleash this information on people without systems that allowed them to properly use and act on that information. And people could make all kinds of decisions that could harm them if they weren't completely aware of what it meant."

Vogelstein and Rebbeck spoke with reporters in Chicago at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Theo www.voanews.com