'Multifactorial disorders in the genomics era'; notes on a recent report from The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences]

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) has issued a report entitled 'Multifactorial diseases in the genomics era'. It makes two major recommendations. The ministers of Science, Health and Economic Affairs are advised to (a) to take steps to ensure the development, evaluation and implementation of advanced high-throughput technologies in order to improve the international position of the Netherlands, and (b) to actively promote the setting up of one or more general biobanks in the Netherlands that should contain biological samples and data from parts of the population and that are not restricted to a single disorder. The report fails to address some important aspects of biobanks, such as the registration of the ethnicity of patients and controls. In addition monogenetic subvariants in multifactorial disease are not mentioned.