Brain Mapping, Hurray

I heard today that the President announced a project to map the human brain led by the same brilliant Doctor who mapped the human genome.  Now there are about six million jokes I can think of about human brains or the lack of them in Washington, but I will leave that up to the late night comedians.  Although I do think that in Washington they need to start with a more basic question of whether a brain actually exists in many of the politicians working there, but I digress.

Mapping the Human Genome Project was actually like a WPA for this century because for the $3.8 billion investment in the project there was a $796 billion output and still counting.  So it seems like a no-brainer, no pun intended, for the government to invest in the basic research to map the most complicated and least understood thing on earth, the human brain.

Sure there are many ailments that are brain related, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder just to name a few, that could benefit from better understanding of how the brain actually works.  Once scientists have those basic building blocks of a map then maybe they can pinpoint the domain of these disorders and help cure them.  All great.

But I see this brain mapping as having a much bigger money making potential than the Human Genome Project.  With the DNA mapping a person might be able to find out if they have a gene, which tends them to obesity.  Just great, you are prone to fatness, but we can’t do anything about it.  That just becomes an excuse;  “I’m fat because I have the fat marker.”

But imagine if the brain mapping could figure out what the pathway is to stop cravings, or learn to feel full and satisfied with less food, or help change people from “live to eat” to “eat to live” types?  The economic payback for this brain mapping could be way bigger than the Human Genome.  The diet industry today just in America is over $60 billion a year and failing miserably.

Granted that if brain mapping could work to help people lose weight some people currently employed would be out of work, like Marie Osmond for Nutrisystem, Jennifer Hudson for Weight Watchers and Suzanne Somers for, well Suzanne Somers.  But they could just fall back of singing and what ever else Suzanne Somers can do.

It took a long time to get that Human Genome thing done.  I think Russ worked on it when he was in college or Grad school and that was like twenty-five years ago.  So let’s encourage the president and this bright Doctor to work a little faster on the brain project.  I think I want to short Weight Watchers stock, but I want to time it right.