OCF is sponsoring salivary diagnostic work with Wong at UCLA. That test is a sieving process. It looks for proteins and RNA factors that we know to be associated with the development of oral cancer. (and many other diseases as well.) The value of the saliva test is that it is a cheap mass screening process to sieve out of a huge population a smaller group to watch. The issue has always been about identifying those at risk, not those with the actual disease already. Now we know who to be paying attention to, and we are not spending money and time (neither of which we have in our broken medical system) to do expensive, labor intensive, tests on large numbers of people. In salivary diagnostics anyone can collect your spit (non doctor) and it can be read by a computer chip programed to look for the markers) no pathologist, and quickly and cheaply say you are in a risk group. This is what is needed today. Affordable, quick, and sorting out those most at risk so that the more expensive processes and interventions may be applied to them.

The real world argument against the DNA testing that you are referring to, is that it disregards the realities of pubic health. It is expensive, it is time consuming, and it requires very highly trained, knowledgeable professionals to conduct it and interpret the findings. We can't even do much simpler and less expensive things in public health that would save lives.

Salivary diagnostics will be a commercial reality for oral cancer in less than 24 months, for other diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer's, and pancreatic cancer in years quickly following. Imagine, a test that would allow pancreatic cancer to no longer be a less than one year death sentence, from the saliva in your mouth, and early detection.