What's a Gene Worth?

I’m a frequent reader of Scott Adams’ blog. He’s the Dilbert creator in case you didn’t know. My only issue with him is that he’s an agnostic, but his humor and satire are really funny. I guess I’ll overlook his eternal mistakes for the hilarity of the here and now.

Anyway, today’s post poses a question of whether or not you would sell your DNA for $100 million. So my quirky analytical brain wonders, “How much would that be per gene?” I went to the government’s Human Genome Project website to see how many genes there are. My first surprise is that they don’t really know. Here I thought the Human Genome Project was completed and so that must mean they know something. Evidently they think there are 30,000 to 40,000 genes. Seems low to me, but then again, I’m not a geneticist.

So if we are conservative and assume there are 30,000 genes then that would yield us about $3,333 per gene. That seems low to me as well. If you think about it, many of our diseases are caused by “bad” genes. So a quick fix to save your life would cost about as much as a old used car in this case.

I would tell Scott’s supermodel to bump it up to $10,000/gene and sell for $300 million. That seems more like a fair trade. I just can’t imagine that my old Toyota is worth as much as a life saving gene.