Taiwan BioBank--C2

Fellow Toastmasters and friends, Good Afternoon!

Welcome and thank you for your interest in Taiwan BioBank, a research project sponsored by Taiwan Academia Sinica to look into the future. This project has by far been the biggest and longest project, a 5-year research project from 2012-2017 to include 200,000 volunteers.

In Taiwan, we are now challenged with more and more citizens with chronic diseases, such as cancers, cardiovascular dieases, diabetes. It is important that we know how to prevent the diseases and to detect the dieases at early stages. With the genes pool of 200,000 volunteers in Taiwan, scientists and doctors can conduct researches and made predictions to help Taiwanese citizens stay healthy!

We are Homo sapiens, by our appreances, yes! In fact, we are coded in our genes, from our parents! A gene is a segment of DNA that encodes biological function. DNA, Deoxyribonucleic acid, stores biological information. The double helix DNA strands have four nucleobases, cytosine (C), guanine (G), adenine (A), or thymine (T), with the base pairing rules (A with T, and C with G) two separate polynucleotide strands to make double-stranded DNA. DNA strands work as a template RNA strand (guanine, uracil, adenine, and cytosine), then translate to specify the sequence of amino acids.

Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species and later introduced basic mechanism of evolution through natural selection resulting in the diversity of life. The first human appeared 70 thousands years ago in Africa. Throughout years, the genes mutated to fit the environment and to cause diseases.

Angelina Jolie, one of the most beautiful women on earth, made a choice to remove both of her breasts and ovaries at age of 39, because the blood test revealed that she carried a mutation in the gene and gave her an estimated 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer. She lost her mother, grandmother and aunt to cancer. She took the preventive measures with the knowledge of her genes.

At the moment, there are genes pools in Iceland, England, Japan, Estonia, US, Germany, and Canada. I welcome you to join Taiwan genes pool, if you age is between 30 and 70. Angelina can't join Taiwan genes pool, because she is not a Taiwanese and she was diagnosed with cancers. After you join Taiwan BioBank, your blood will be tested and you will be offered a gift of NT$500 Family Mark Coupon!

Please rise, extend both hands to reach out to your neighbors! Let's join hands to build a healthy society by pooling our genes together. You and I can help ourselves and our future generations detect and treat the diseases at early stages, if not to prevent the diseases! Now, please be seated!

Thank you again for having me here and I look forward to your participation in Taiwan Biobank, Toastmaster of the Day!