Viking Genes project passes £200k mark in donations but more is needed
A CHARITY aiming to raise £1 million to genetically screen up to 5,000 Shetland residents is to employ a health care economist to prove the value of the project.
It comes after the Viking Genes project passed the £200,000 mark in community donations.
However, despite applying to various “traditional” research and government funders, the project has so far been unable to attract any public money towards the project.
That said, the value of genetically screening a large section of the Shetland adult population has been recognised by NHS Shetland. In July, the local health board donated £50,000 towards the project from its endowment fund.
Around 50 people attended a Viking Genes ‘networking event’ at the Shetland Museum and Archives on Friday night where project lead Jim Wilson Flett gave an update on the aims and progress of the work he and a small local fundraising committee are doing.
This follows on from two public events held last week in Scalloway and Whalsay.
Professor Wilson, of Edinburgh University, has been tracking harmful changes in the gene pool of people in the Northern Isles for many years.
He has been able to identify variants and disorders that make people more likely to develop certain cancers and other serious diseases.
Over the years, several local people have publicly told their story of how the Viking Genes project had been able to identify an increased risk of cancer which then led to an early and successful intervention.
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“We have been studying the DNA of the people of Orkney and Shetland for about 20 years, and the most important thing that we have discovered is that Shetland in particular has a very high risk of a small number of diseases including breast, ovarian and prostate cancer, particular forms of heart disease and some other metabolic conditions,” Professor Wilson said.
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“We also discovered that the future unborn children in Shetland are at risk of cystic fibrosis. We feel that there is an answer to this.
“We should screen the population (…) so that we can prevent these conditions from occurring, and those who are thinking of having children could take advantage of the knowledge and, if need be, have IVF and choose the embryo that does not have the diseases.”
He said everybody at Viking Genes was grateful for the £200,000 raised so far, and added that the project could start getting under way once around half of the £1m target was reached.
To increase the urgency and also to attract government support towards the pioneering project in preventative health care, Viking Genes is planning to commission a health care economist to “model how much this [the screening and treatment of some islanders] is going to cost, [and] how much is going to be saved from future cancer treatment”.
“We will do this and publish it as a plank in the evidence base,” he said.
“We have approached a number of traditional funders, including parts of the government and others, and have not had any success to date but shall continue to do so.
“But we are impatient. This is possible to do now, so why should we wait?
“So we decided to do this now to take advantage of the very strong community that exists in Shetland and our strong ties with the community over the last 20 years and raise the funding ourselves and perhaps act as a pilot study so that people in other places, and perhaps even the whole of Scotland, can follow suit.”
The project aims to screen a further 5,000 Shetland residents in addition to the 3,500 already screened over recent years. The screening cost per person is estimated to be around £200.
Chair of the fundraising committee Sandra Laurenson said Friday night’s event was a good way “to keep the conversation going” about what the project has set out to achieve.
She said she was pleased to see several representatives from local businesses attending.
Donations toward the project can be made here. Viking Genes Shetland can be contacted on 07717 537838.
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